VIII.
The household at the Tems cabin were keeping late hours that night. Except for a certain reserve of cogitation, which at times held him silent with a burning thought in his eye, his superficially moving lips framing unspoken words, and occasionally a keen, sarcastic smile irradiating his features with the light of some satiric expectation, Cap'n Lucy had resumed his wonted aspect and mental attitude and the habits of his simple existence.
"Ye fetch yer book out'n yer pocket," he said imperatively to Jasper Larrabee early in the evening, when the young man had joined them on the porch. "The gals ain't goin' ter run away,--leastwise 'thout cornsider'ble mo' incourage_mint_ 'n they hev hed. They'll keep! Ye jes' sot awhile by that thar taller dip in thar an' read yer book, an' I'll listen out hyar."
The penalties of the acquisition of knowledge, from the days of the Garden of Eden to those of the hero of the horn-book, have not been few. They fell somewhat heavily on Jasper Larrabee, debarred the fresh air, heavy with perfumed dew; the vicinage of dank vines; the glimmer of the firefly in the bosky gloom; the scintillating stars in the sky above the massive mountains; the sweet, low voices of the two girls, silenced now; and the trivial chatter so dear to the heart of youth. The room, with the low red glow of the embers, was warm to-night; the tallow dip melted and sputtered and cast a wan, melancholy, ineffective radiance into the dusky spaces, rendering the aspect of the familiar furnishings strange and spare and dull, instead of all ruddily a-flicker with the dancing firelight in which he was accustomed to see them. Even the dogs had deserted the hearthstone, and went in and out with lolling tongues, and hot, sleepy eyes, and an inattentive manner. Moths and strange winged fire-worshipers, unknown to his observation hitherto, would fly in from the cool darkness without, circle swiftly about the white jet of the candle, and now and then, with a sudden dart, would fall, shriveled cinders but for the convulsive throes of lingering life, on the page of the volume.
He wondered sometimes, as he droned on and on, if Adelicia were listening, or if Julia could see him from where she sat. From the lighted spaces he could not distinguish their shadowy figures, albeit Cap'n Lucy, close at hand and with the red glow of his pipe, was plain enough. Sometimes Larrabee felt the vague sense of a gaze fixed upon his clear-cut face, all etherealized, illumined by the soft pallid white light within against the brown shadows. He was unaware of any valid embellishment of his aspect from the pensive gleam, the irradiated square of the window, the ascetic gravity of his expression, intent and pondering on the longer words, which it was his pride that he need not pause to spell. On the contrary, he was often conscious of cutting a sorry figure when Cap'n Lucy, with the rigor of a most rational reason and all the fervid insistence of a personal interest, would plunge at him, and require him to recant, to spell out syllable by syllable some questioned dogma, and at last, with all the nonchalance of a sophisticated theologian, take refuge in the equivalent of a plea of mistranslation.
"Ye can't haffen read, boy!" he would exclaim roughly. "Ye don't read ekal ter what ye hev done. Keep on goin' back'ards, an' ye'll git thar arter a while. 'Agree with thine adversary!' My stars! ef ye war wuth a grain o' gunpowder, ye could see ez that air obleeged ter be '_Dis_-agree with thine adversary.' It stands ter reason! '_Dis_-agree' with him, early and often, else the dad-burned critter will git up the insurance ter disagree with you-uns. I know thine adversary! Been 'quainted with him this many a year! Read on, read on, Jasper; git shet o' thine adversary."
Thus it was that, with the shadowy, snarling, intent old face vaguely visible in the dusk, just at his elbow, outside the window, ready to spring forward at the first intimation of an unacceptable doctrine; with the sense of responsibility for all the biblical dogmas irreconcilable with Cap'n Lucy's tenets and the tenor of his way; with the spectacle of glamour, lure, catastrophe, and death furnished by the unrestrainable moths, Jasper Larrabee found his preëminence of learning a comfortless pinnacle, and even the wonted sweet solaces of complacence in his superiority were denied him. He was forced to appear before the eyes of his lady love as an ignorant pretender, of ridiculous and inadequate assumptions,--and that by a man who could not read his own name,--humiliated and browbeaten; for how dared he answer Cap'n Lucy? More than once he wished himself back at the Lost Time mine, where he knew Espey thought him to be, and where Lorenzo Taft needed him. The work, unpalatable as he often found it, would be welcome indeed, and his untutored, unquestioning, often inattentive audience there a happy exchange from Cap'n Lucy in the character of polemic. He made some effort to shift the subject, to turn from the preceptive and doctrinal pages upon which he had chanced to fall to the chronicle of events in the nature of historical detail, as less liable to elicit Cap'n Lucy's contradictory faculties. It availed him naught. Cap'n Lucy's interest was fairly roused, and he imperatively negatived the proposition. The guest felt, still later, that it was not hospitality in its truest sense which so flatly declined to heed the suggestion of departure. And thus constrained, he read on, so conscious of the shadowy face at his elbow that he seemed to see it, with the light of excitement in the wide blue eyes, the alertness in every line, the lips intently parted, the glow of the pipe dying out as it was supported motionless by the uplifted hand.
"Hey!" shrieked out Cap'n Lucy suddenly, as if he had been poignantly pinched. "Ef he takes yer coat, gin him yer cloak! Jasper, ye air demented! Ye ain't 'quainted with the dad-burned ravelings out o' the alphabit, let alone the weft of it! My sakes!" in an outraged falsetto, "ye tell me that's sot up ez Christian doctrine in the Book! Take yer coat, gin yer cloak! Whar's the man ez hev done it! Trot him out! Great Moses an' Aaron! I'd like ter look at him! Take yer corner-stone an' monimint o' boundary, an' gin him yer line an' yer lan'!--ha! ha! ha! Let him take yer rock known ez Big Hollow Boulder, an' gin him yer corner-stone!--ha! ha!"
Luther rose precipitately. The significance of the paternal discovery of the removal of the corner-stone was fraught with great perplexity and foreboding, and he hardly knew what ill-judged disclosure was to follow. He had intended to interpose, albeit he scarcely had a pretext. It came to him at the moment.
"What's that? I 'lowed I hearn suthin'!" he exclaimed.
Cap'n Lucy turned upon him with the breathless acrimony of one interrupted in some cherished pursuit.
"Hearn suthin'? Jes' the rustlin' o' yer own long ears,--that's all. I"--He stopped abruptly.
In the midst of his strident raised tones an alien sound smote his attention. There was an approach of horsemen from down the road. Cap'n Lucy's acrimony was merged in curiosity and excited expectation. Still holding his pipe, filled with dead ashes, as stiffly and cautiously before him as if its wonted coals glowed in the cob-bowl, he rose from his chair, and advanced a pace or two nearer the rude steps, peering out into the darkness. The two girls had turned their heads toward the sound. Larrabee was leaning on his arms in the window, and Luther had started down the path to the bars. His deep bass voice sounded in a bated, thunderous mutter, as he rebuked the barking dogs, whose menace subsided into low growls, punctuated now and then by a clamorous yelp. Perhaps the insistent tone of these canine threats influenced the new-comers, for it was at a goodly distance that the party called a halt and hailed the house.
Luther returned the halloo with a ringing response in kind, but Cap'n Lucy added a genial "'Light and hitch" to the unknown guest that the midnight had convoyed hither, his habit of broad hospitality all unmindful of the individuality or intent of the new-comers. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter all sorts," he would sturdily answer to the occasional remonstrance that times were not what they once were, and that he might thus "at sight unseen" be inviting in the marauder or the devil. "Me an' Luther air ekal ter 'em."
The tone of this hospitality seemed a sore-needed encouragement in this instance. Rodolphus Ross had flung himself, metaphorically, upon the fraternal bosom of Luther, as he hastily sought to summarize the misfortunes that had befallen him; the slow young mountaineer, all unprepared for so dramatic a recital, staring, uncomprehending and amazed, at his interlocutor, hardly knowing whether to ascribe his fluent diction to drink or to histrionic talents; as fact he did not take it into account.
"Yes, sir!" the wild-eyed Ross was saying as he came up the steps, "flung over the bluffs, horse an' all,--dead or alive, I dunno! Cap'n Tems, yes, sir; plumb proud ter shake hands," mechanically acknowledging the introduction to the head of the house. "Jes' purtendin' ter handcuff the fool,--jes' fur fun,--an' he fired at me! Yes, sir, fired at the off'cer o' the law! I dunno what ailed him, 'thout he thunk I war in earnest. But Lord! he war bound ter know I war arter another man. I tole him so. I hed nuthin' agin this hyar Lar'bee. I war jes' purtendin' ter handcuff him, jes' shuck the bracelets at him, jes' fur fun,--ye know, Cap'n Tems, it's powerful dull an' drowsy a-ridin' so stiddy arter malefactors 'thout no sort'n entertainment or enjyemint,--an' this hyar Jasper Lar'bee jes' ups an' fires at the off'cer o' the law, jes' scorched my clothes." He held up his arm, and caught the pallid light of the candle on his coat and powder-singed sleeve. "Not that I keer fur the josie, 'ceptin' it's too durned near the meat fur thar ter be enny fun in shootin' through it."
He laughed in a constrained falsetto tone,--his wonted laugh, but with all the mirth eliminated from it. It had a sort of wooden quality, and ended with a nervous catch in his throat. The light falling through the window showed his dark eyes, set a trifle too close together, and the straight black brows meeting above them. His teeth gleamed, for the laugh left his lips mechanically distended. Larrabee, leaning on his folded arms in the window, a mere silhouette upon the pallid lustre of the aureola of the candle behind him, gazed silently on the stranger's face.
One is apt, in thinking of a man of experience, to associate sophistication with the idea. But life presents varied aspects of mental development, and the caution, the silence, the reserve of judgment, with which Cap'n Lucy hearkened might have seemed gleaned from the observation of the juggle of cause and effect in a far wider sphere. The two comrades of the deputy sheriff said not a word, and once more the officer began to elaborate the justification of his conduct.
"It takes a toler'ble stiff backbone ter set on a saddle an' let a man shoot at ye fur nuthin'. It 'stonished me powerful. I war jes' funnin', an' purtended ter be aimin' ter handcuff this young rooster, an' he jes' whurled roun' an' let the bullet fly. I b'lieve he 'lowed I war in earnest, yes, sir. This hyar Lar'bee hev been up ter suthin' agin the law,--moonshinin', I reckon,--else he wouldn't hev been so dad-burned handy with his fi'crackers."
"Why--why"--blurted out Luther, amazed at the lack of symmetry in the situation, and incapable of the paternal wisdom of silently awaiting developments, with the incongruity of the sight of Larrabee in the window mutely hearkening to the reflections upon the "Larrabee" who took so vehement a part in the officer's reminiscences--"'twarn't Lar'bee, mebbe; some other fellow."
"Naw, sir," returned the deputy. "This hyar man," laying his hand on his bulky companion's shoulder, "knowed whar Lar'bee's mother, a widder lady, lived, an' we-uns called him 'Lar'bee' an' 'Jasper,' an' he answered ter 'em both; an' his mother called him 'Sonny.' He's a wild-catter, sure. He's"--He caught himself suddenly, remembering the prepossession against the revenue force which often animates even law-abiding citizens of this region. "But he needn't hev fired at _me_! I got nuthin' agin moonshiners. I b'long ter the County, not ter the Nunited States,--to the County!"
"Whar's this man now?" demanded Cap'n Lucy circumspectly.
The alert, sinister face of the deputy changed. But he sought to bluff off the anxieties and conscious criminations which crowded upon him. He swung his hat, which had a bullet-hole in it, gayly in his light grasp, and his dark eyes twinkled as he met the gaze of his host.
"Ye air a powerful good hand at axin' riddles, but this'n air too hard fur me! I _dunno_, an' these men _dunno_! I fired back in self-defense at the miserable fool--I hed been funnin' all along, cap'n. I shot his horse, I know, an' the critter slipped, an' the whole caboodle went back'ards over the bluffs--an'--an'--he mought be dead or alive--Air--air that a cheer?"
He had suddenly lost his self-control; he sank back into a seat and seemed gasping for breath.
The details of their immediate errand thus devolved upon his comrades,--a lantern and a guide to search the slope where the victim of the deputy's pleasantry had fallen.
"'Dolphus air sech a turrible bouncin' wild buck," said his friend from "the t'other e-end o' the county," who had begun to resume his remonstrant air, as of "I-told-you-so." He was a slow and serious-minded man, with a scant appreciation of even the most symmetrical jest, but when the joke seemed furnished with such distortions of sequelæ his gravity grew aggressive. "'Dolphus kin crack a toler'ble funny joke wunst in a while, but this hyar one air goin' ter make him laff on the t'other side o' his mouth."
"Who war it ez ye war arter, sure enough?" asked Cap'n Lucy.
"A stranger what they 'lowed war puttin' up with you-uns, Cap'n Tems."
"Hey?" cried Cap'n Lucy, with a high quaver of excited delight. "He hev gone; but, my stars! what a hearty welcome ye mought hev hed with him!"
"What's he done?" demanded Larrabee, speaking for the first time, addressing the friend of the deputy.
"Shot a man in Tanglefoot Cove," he replied, looking somewhat intently at the silhouette in the window.
"What did ye 'low his name war?" asked Larrabee, placing one hand behind his ear as if he had not heard what indeed they had not disclosed.
"Espey,--John Espey from Tanglefoot, o' course. He hev been hidin' out cornsider'ble time."
There was a sudden significant silence which the stranger felt, but did not comprehend. Then Cap'n Lucy, recovering his poise, remarked:--
"Waal, the stranger ez we-uns hev hed hyar air named Kenneth Kenn'ston, from Bretonville. He air a town man, an' aimin' ter build some sort'n tavern in the Cove."
The three men--for the officer was himself again--looked at one another with the pathetic helpless disgust of hunting dogs on a false trail.
It seemed that their quest was hopeless from the beginning, and in its interests they had deeply involved themselves in the toils of the law which they sought to aid.
"Waal," said the deputy's friend, "we-uns hed better git the lantern, an' take ter the woods agin an' find the corpse,"--the deputy winced at the word so palpably that even his sturdy, literal-minded companion was moved to seek some euphemism; "leastwise find out what's the damage we-uns hev been an' done."
His stolid, unflinching shouldering of such responsibility in the matter as might fall to his share was oddly contrasted with the nervous excitement and agitation of the man from the Gap, who had served as guide to the party to Mrs. Larrabee's house.
"Waal, _I_ ain't done none o' the damage," he protested, nodding his head emphatically. "I thunk I hed ter kem along o' the off'cer o' the law whenst required. I hed no idee o' junketin' 'roun' with the wildes' buck this side o' hell, a-caperin' like a possessed lunatic, an' a-shootin' of 'spectable citizens off'n the bluffs. Jasper Lar'bee done nuthin' ter me,--never laid eyes on him afore. _I_ done none o' the damage. I call ye ter witness, Cap'n Tems, ez I hed nuthin' ter do with his takin' off."
Cap'n Lucy, always adorning the opposition, gave a high, fleering laugh. "_Me ter witness!_ Me! Why, man, I been settin' hyar sence dark, a-readin' o' the Holy Scriptur's. I hev no part in yer ridin' an' raidin'."
That repulsion to the idea of taking life, and all its ramifications of moral responsibility, apart from the legal consequence, natural to the civilized man, had yielded in the deputy sheriff to his habitual mental impulses. His wild, fierce, shallow personality was in the ascendant once more.
"I'll guarantee ye, Bob," he declared, with his wonted swift smile of dark eyes and red lips and lifted meeting eyebrows. "Ef the g'loot is dead, he died resistin' arrest by the off'cer o' the law. Ef he be 'live, I be durned ef he don't hev cause ter resist the off'cer o' the law, fur I'll swar ter glory I'll nose out what this hyar Jasper Lar'bee hev been a-doin' of ter be so monst'ous afeard o' the bracelets bein' put onto him,--murder or moonshinin', it's all the same ter me. I'll set the bloodhounds o' the law onto him, sure! He hain't gin me sech a skeer ez this fur nuthin'!"
As the blood came surging hotly along its accustomed channels, his fury mounted higher. It jumped with his humor to threaten as living the man who he feared was dead. He sought to spurn that possibility from his consciousness. It renewed his confidence in himself, too, to protest so jauntily that if the man had lost his life it was in resisting the law legitimately enforced. He reviewed, with a burst of anger, the fright of the other two men and his own anxiety that had suffered this lapse of attention to his own interest, and allowed the true detail of the case to be rehearsed here publicly. Naught could obliterate this; naught could justify him save to prove that the surprised Jasper Larrabee had been guilty of some offense against the law, and was resisting arrest legally attempted.
"I'll fix him! I'll follow him like a bloodhound! I'll nose him out and pull him down! Bless God, I will!" he cried out with sudden vehemence. Then he turned roughly to his two companions. "Kem on, ye two mud-turkles! Ye got jes' about ez much life an' sperit ez a couple o' old tarripin. Stir yer stumps, bubby," to Luther. "Git yer lantern, an' bring yer slow bones along ter aid the off'cer o' the law! An' ye, too, my frien' in the winder, ez quiet ez a cat stealin' cream; ye 'pear ter be young an' able-bodied. I summons ye ter kem an' aid the off'cer o' the law!"
The tallow dip, which had been for some moments sputtering in the socket of the candlestick, suddenly flared up with a wide illumination, then sunk as suddenly almost to extinction, feebly rose again, and, in a gust of wind, was extinguished, leaving a tuft of red sparks on the drooping wick, and a pervasive odor of burning grease in the room and porch. Perhaps it was because of the brighter light for the moment, perhaps because of the keener observation of the officer, whose faculties were once more well in hand, but no one else had noticed a strange stillness in the figure of Adelicia, as she sat in her wonted place on the edge of the floor of the porch, leaning back against the post.
"One o' yer darters hev fainted, I b'lieve," he said to Cap'n Lucy. "Suthin' ails her." Then, turning away, "Kem on, fellers; mount an' git out'n this. We-uns hev been hyar too long now."
As Jasper Larrabee rode away in the little troop toward the scene of the disaster, to search for the body of the supposititious Jasper Larrabee, his mental faculties began to recover from the torpor of surprise which had benumbed them. That cautious self-control which sometimes seems an added faculty in a certain type of law-breaker had held him mute as he watched the development of events. Now, as he began to take cognizance of the disclosures of the evening, he adhered of sober intention to the policy he had intuitively adopted. He feared the acknowledgment that he had received and harbored Jack Espey, a fugitive from justice, more than the acrimonious search of the deputy sheriff for the misdeeds of Jasper Larrabee. This, indeed, might result in his apprehension for the violation of the revenue laws, and the discovery of the moonshiner's lair, and this would mean many years of imprisonment; but the other might involve him, and possibly his mother as well, in a trial for murder, as accessories after the fact. It might be impossible to establish their ignorance of Espey's crime, and their lack of connivance in his escape. He had that pervasive terror of the law, as of technical and arbitrary construction of crime, common to the unlearned. His heart burned with rancor against his whilom friend. He would not recognize Espey's share in these ignorant terrors of the law. He argued that if his friend had been open with him, he would at least have been a free agent in receiving him, have had some voice in the degree of responsibility he assumed. As it was, his open-handed hospitality had been grossly imposed upon, and as a return he was given the choice of the jeopardy of a charge as accessory to a murder, or of an infringement of the revenue laws. He realized the whole drama as it had been enacted. He understood that Espey, conniving at the officer's mistake, and allowing him to suppose him to be Larrabee, had thus shielded his own identity as the fugitive from justice whom they sought. And this ruse Espey fancied was discovered, when the deputy, in his wild horse-play, had facetiously endeavored to handcuff him; he had therefore strenuously resisted, and thus had possibly come to his death. This possibility did not soften Larrabee toward him; perhaps he did not altogether accredit it at once, for death is difficult to realize even when a certainty. He dwelt upon his own danger, even more upon his mother's possible jeopardy; upon her untiring and laborious hospitality; upon his own labors which had rendered such entertainment practicable, for the money earned without her knowledge at the still went, much of it, to this pious use.
The sharpest sting of ingratitude is often the sense that the giver has been a fool. Larrabee harbored a surly grudge against himself as he rode silently on, and Luther, uncomprehending his friend's reason for not disclosing his identity, and suspecting that Jack Espey was the man they sought, was silent too. The loud voices of the others in acrimonious criminations and recriminations accented the stillness of the night, and the sound of their horses' hoofs as they filed along the mountain passes, multiplied by rock and ravine, and far echoes from distant heights, might have seemed the march of squadrons of cavalry.
The skies had taken on that unfamiliar aspect of the hours which straitly precede the dawn. Far, far, on their pauseless way the constellations fared. Stars were low in the west, which on these summer nights had seemed the familiars of the meridian. A strange sense of loneliness, of silence, pervaded the firmament. The breathless pause that heralds the miracle of dawn bated the pulses of nature. No more song of cicada, no more stir of wind. Once a meteor, with an incongruous irrelevance of effect, shot athwart the sky with its gleaming trail as of star-dust; the motion was like a sacrilege in the holy stillness and breathlessness of the world.
And suddenly in the midst of the myriad scintillations a brilliant white jewel was ablaze, which Jasper Larrabee could have sworn was not there before; pellucid, splendid, tremulous, a star of stars. He knew the skies only as the herder or the shepherd knows them in lonely, lowly paths of earth, but even an ignorant man may feel that the circuit below is narrow and the ways above are wide, and the heart is lifted up. Not the name of one of the stellular glories visible to the naked eye could he syllable, but he had marked them all; he was wont to dwell for hours upon their contemplation; he knew the contour of their most brilliant whorls and scintillating arabesques as he knew the intricacies of the woodland ways in the wilderness. He had drawn his horse hastily back upon the haunches, and again his eyes sought the alignment of the stars as his fancy had marshaled them. There was one more,--one that he had never before seen; one unknown to all the splendid nights that had ever shone upon the earth.
The voices of the men patrolling the slope below the point, where they had paused, rose excitedly on the still air. The horse was found, he gathered vaguely, dead, shot through the brain. The man was gone. The officer, in a frenzy of energy, beat the bushes far and near, lest the fugitive, wounded and disabled, might have crept away in the midst of them, and still lay hidden in the leafy covert. The hour wore away; the dawn came on apace, and, with the quest still fruitless, the officer presently mounted his horse and rode speedily off, fearing less, perchance, the review of his conduct by his superiors in the county town than the arbitration of the few citizens of the scantily settled region, who might take an inimical view of the disappearance of the guide of the jocose officer.
Only when the gray day came with the tremulous wind over the mountains, and the craggy ranges grew darkly distinct, and the unpeopled wooded valley distinct and vaguely drear, and the deep blue sky faded and was colorless, and one by one the stars noiselessly, invisibly slipped away without a trace, like some splendid promise never to be fulfilled, did Jasper Larrabee turn rein, perplexed and disquieted and greatly awed. For in his unlettered ignorance he had never heard of that simple fact known to astronomy as a temporary star.