"I don"t aim to go with you, Huldah," he said gently. "You love Wade Turrentine, and Wade loves you; you was to be wedded this fall. I don"t aim for any affairs of mine to part you two."
The girl hung her head, painfully flushed, her eyes full of tears.
"I don"t care nothin" about Wade," she choked. "Him and me has----"
"I reckon you"ve quarrelled" said Creed, sympathetically. "That needn"t come to anything. I"m going over and talk to Jephthah Turrentine to-morrow morning, and I want you to come with me!"
"No," said Huldah getting to her feet and looking strangely at him. "The rain"s about done now; the moon"ll be comin" up in half a hour--I"m a-goin" on down to Hepzibah, like I said I was. Ef Wade Turrentine wants me, he knows whar to come for me. Ef he thinks of me as he said he did the last time we had speech together--w"y, I never want to put eyes on his face again. Oh--Creed, I wish"t you"d come with me!"
"But it was me you quarrelled about," remonstrated Bonbright with that sudden clear vision which ultra-spiritual natures often show, and that startling forthrightness of speech which amazes and daunts the mountaineer. "I"m the last man you ought to leave the mountain with, Huldah, if you want to make up with Wade."
"How--how did you know?" whispered the girl, staring at him. "Well, anyhow, I ain"t never a-goin" back thar."
She could not be prevailed on to go to bed with Aunt Nancy, when Doss Provine and the children were asleep, and Creed had gone to his quarters in the little office building, but sat by the fire all night staring into the embers, occasionally stirring them or putting on a stick of wood. At the earliest grey of dawn she waked Nancy, bidding the elder woman fasten the door after her. Declining in strangely subdued fashion her hostess"s offer of hot coffee, she stepped noiselessly out and, with a swift look about, dived into the steep short-cut trail which led almost straight down the face of Big Turkey Track, from turn to turn of the main road.
A cloud clung to the Side; the foliage of only the foremost trees emerged from its blur, and these were dimmed and flatted as though a soft white veil were tangled among their leaves. Into this white mystery of dawn the girl had vanished.
Nancy looked curiously after her a moment, then glanced swiftly about as Huldah had done, her eyes dwelling long on Creed"s little shack, standing peaceful in the morning mists. Softly she turned back, and closed and barred the door.
Chapter XII
In the Lion"s Den
At seven o"clock, despite entreaties and warnings, Creed mounted his mule and set out for the Turrentine place.
"Don"t you trust nothin" nor n.o.body over thar," Nancy followed him out to the gate to reiterate. "Old Jephthah Turrentine"s as big a rascal as they" is unhung. No--I wouldn"t trust Judith neither (hush now, Little Buck; you don"t know what granny"s a-talkin" about); she"s apt to git some fool gal"s notion o" being jealous o" Huldy, or something like that, and see you killed as cheerful as I"d wring a chicken"s neck. (For the Lord"s sake, Doss, take these chil"en down to the spring branch; they mighty nigh run me crazy with they" fussin" an" cryin"!) Don"t you trust none on "em, boy."
"Why, Aunt Nancy, I trust everybody on that whole place, excepting Blatchley Turrentine," said Creed st.u.r.dily. "Even Andy and Jeff, if I had a chance to talk to them, could be got to see reason. They"re not the bloodthirsty crew you make them out. They"re good folks."
She looked at him in exasperation, yet with a sort of reluctant approval and admiration.
"Well," she sighed, as she saw him mount and start, "mebbe yo" safer goin" right smack into the lion"s den, like Dan"el, than you would be to sneak up."
Summer was at full tide, and the world had been new washed last night.
Scents of mint and pennyroyal rose up under his mule"s slow pacing feet.
The meadow that stretched beyond Nancy"s cabin was a green sea, with flower foam of white weed and dog-fennel; and the fence row was a long breaker with surf of elder blossom, the garden a tangle of bean-vine arbours. The corn patch rustled valiantly; the pastures were streaked with pale yellow primroses; and Bob Whites ran through the young crops, calling.
Creed rode forward. A gay wind was abroad under the blue sky. Every tiniest leaf that danced and flirted on its slender stem sent back gleams of the morning sunlight from its wet, glistening surface. The woods were full of bird songs, and the myriad other lesser voices of a midsummer morning sounded clear and distinct upon the vast, enfolding silence of the mountains.
It seemed beyond reason out in that gay July sunshine that anything dark or tragic could happen to one. But after all man cannot be so different from Nature which produces him, and the night before had given them a pa.s.sionate, brief, destructive thunder-storm. Creed noted the ravages of it here and there; the broken boughs, the levelled or uprooted herbage, the washed and riven soil, as his mule moved soberly along.
At the Turrentine cabin all was quiet. The young men of the house had been out the entire night before guarding the trails that Creed Bonbright should not leave the mountains secretly. A good deal of moonshine whiskey went to this night guarding, particularly when there was the excuse of a shower to call for it, and the watchers of the trails now lay in their beds making up arrears of sleep. Jephthah stood looking out of his own cabin door when, about fifteen minutes ahead of Creed, Taylor Stribling tethered his half-broken little filly in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, and ran across the gra.s.sy side yard.
"Bonbright"s out an" a-headin" this way!" he volleyed in a hoa.r.s.e whisper as he approached the head of the clan.
"Who"s with him?" asked Jephthah, turning methodically back into the room for the squirrel gun over the door.
"n.o.body. He ain"t got no rifle. I reckon he"s packin" a pistol, though, of course. Nancy Cyard bawled an" took on considerable when he started.
Shall I call the boys?"
"No," returned Jephthah briefly, replacing the clean brown rifle on its fir pegs. "No, I don"t need n.o.body, and I don"t need Old Sister. I reckon I can deal with one young feller alone."
He walked unhurriedly toward the main house. Stribling stood looking after him a moment, uncertainly. The spy"s errand was performed. He had now his dismissal; it would not do to be seen about the place at this time. He went reluctantly back to the waiting filly, mounted and turned her head toward a high point that commanded the big road for some distance. A little later Jephthah Turrentine sat in the open threshing-floor porch of the main house smoking, Judith within was busy looking over and washing a mess of Indian lettuce and sissles in a piggin, when Creed rode into the yard.
The ancient hound thumped twice with a languid tail on the floor; Judith, back in her kitchen, stayed her hand, and stared out at the newcomer with parted lips which the blood forsook; Jephthah"s inscrutable black eyes rose to Creed"s face and rested there; nothing but that aspect, pale, desolate, ravaged, the strip of plaster running from brow to cheek, marked the difference between this visit and any other.
Yet the old house seemed to crouch close, to regard him askance from under lowering eyes, as though through all its timbers ran the message that the enemy was here.
"Good morning," he hailed.
"Howdy. "Light--"light and come in," Jephthah adjured him, without rising, "I"m proud to see ye."
His own countenance was worn and haggard with sleeplessness and anxiety, but with the mountaineer"s dignified reticence he pa.s.sively ignored the fact, a.s.suming a detached manner of mild jocularity.
Creed, under inspection from six pairs of eyes, though there was only one individual visible to him, got from his mule, tethered the animal, and came and seated himself on the porch edge.
"Aunt Nancy didn"t want me to come over this morning," he began with that directness which always amazed his Turkey Track neighbours and put them all astray as to the man, his real meaning and intentions.
"Well, now--didn"t she?" inquired the other innocently. "Hit was a fine mornin" for a ride, too, and I "low ye" had yo" reasons for comin" in this direction--not but what we"re proud to see ye on business or on pleasure."
"Are any of the boys about?" asked Creed, suddenly looking up.
"I don"t know adzackly whar the boys is at," compromised Jephthah, soothing his conscience with the fiction that one might be lying in one bed and another in some place to him unknown. "Was there any particular one you wanted to see?"
"I was looking for Wade," said Creed briefly, and a silent shock went through one of the men kneeling on the bed inside the log wall, peering through a c.h.i.n.k at the visitor.
Judith could bear the strain no longer. Torn by diverse emotions, she s.n.a.t.c.hed up a bucket, ran out of the back door and down to the spring.
Returning with it, and her composure somewhat repaired, she dipped a cool and dripping gourdful, walked swiftly through the front room and stood abruptly before Creed, presenting it with almost no word of greeting, only the customary, "Would ye have a fresh drink?"
"Thank you," said Creed taking the gourd from her hand and lifting his eyes to her face. He needed no prompting now; his own heart spoke very clearly; he knew as he looked at her that she was all the world to him--and that he was utterly lost and cut off from her.
Jephthah, on the porch, and those unseen eyes within, watched the two curiously, while Creed drank from the gourd, emptied out what water remained, and returned it to Judith, and she all the while regarded him with a burning gaze, finally bursting out:
"What do you want to see Wade about? Is it--is it Huldy?"
"Yes, Miss Judith, it"s Huldah," Creed a.s.sented quietly.
"I don"t know as its worth while talkin" to Wade about that thar gal,"
put in Jephthah meditatively. "She sorter sidled off last night and left the place, and I think he feels kinder pestered and mad like. My boys is all mighty peaceful in their dispositions, but it ain"t the best to talk to any man when he"s had that which riles him."
"Whar is Huldy Spiller?" demanded Judith standing straight and tall before the visitor, disdaining the indirection of her uncle"s methods.
"Is she over at you-all"s?"
"That"s what I wanted to talk to Wade about," returned Creed evasively.