"Where are we going?" Woodward asked.
"Well," said Parmalee, "the boys laid off for to have some fun, an"
it"s done got so these times that when a feller wants fun he"s got to git furder up the mounting."
If the words were evasive, the tone was far more so, but Woodward paid little attention to either. He had the air of a man accustomed to being called up in the early hours of the morning to go forth on mysterious expeditions.
A bright fire was blazing in Poteet"s kitchen, and the light, streaming through the wide doorway, illuminated the tops of the trees on the edge of the clearing. Upon this background the shadows of the women, black and vast--t.i.tanic indeed,--were projected as they pa.s.sed to and fro.
From within there came a sound as of the escape of steam from some huge engine; but the men waiting on the outside knew that the frying-pan was doing its perfect work.
The meat sizzled and fried; the shadows in the tops of the trees kept up what seemed to be a perpetual promenade, and the men outside waited patiently and silently. This silence oppressed Woodward. He knew that but for his presence the mountaineers would be consulting together and cracking their dry jokes. In spite of the fact that he recognised in the curious impa.s.siveness of these people the fundamental qualities of courage and endurance, he resented it as a barrier which he had never been able to break down. He would have preferred violence of some sort.
He could meet rage with rage, and give blow for blow, but how was he to deal with the reserve by which he was surrounded? He was not physically helpless, by any means, but the fact that he had no remedy against the att.i.tude of the men of Hog Mountain chafed him almost beyond endurance.
He was emphatically a man of action--full of the enterprises usually set in motion by a bright mind, a quick temper, and ready courage; but, measured by the impa.s.siveness which these men had apparently borrowed from the vast aggressive silences that give strength and grandeur to their mountains, how trivial, how contemptible all his activities seemed to be!
But the frying was over after a while. The t.i.tanic shadows went to roost in the tops of the trees, and Teague Poteet and his friends, including ex-Deputy Woodward, took themselves and their fried meat off up the mountain, and the raid followed shortly after. It was a carefully-planned raid, and deserved to be called a formidable one.
Like many another similar enterprise it was a failure, so far as the purposes of the Government were concerned, but fate or circ.u.mstance made it famous in the political annals of that period. Fifteen men, armed with carbines, rode up the mountain. They were full of the spirit of adventure. They felt the strong arm of the law behind them. They knew they were depended upon to make some sort of demonstration, and this, together with a dram too much here and there, made them a trifle reckless and noisy. They had been taught to believe that they were in search of outlaws. They caught from the officers who organised them something of the irritation which was the natural result of so many fruitless attempts to bring Hog Mountain to terms. They betrayed a sad lack of discretion. They brandished their weapons in the frightened faces of women and children, and made many foolish mistakes which need not be detailed here.
They rode noisily over the mountain, making a circle of Pullium"s Summit, and found nothing. They peered over the precipitous verge of Prather"s Mill Road, and saw nothing. They paused occasionally to listen, and heard nothing. They pounced upon a lonely pedlar who was toiling across the mountain with his pack upon his back, and plied him with questions concerning the Moonshiners. This pedlar appeared to be a very ignorant fellow indeed. He knew his name was Jake Cohen, and that was about all. He had never crossed Hog Mountain before, and, so help his gracious, he would never cross it again. The roads were all rough and the ladies were all queer. As for the latter--well, great Jingo!
they would scarcely look at his most beautiful collection of shawls and ribbons and laces, let alone buy them. In Villa Bay (or, as Cohen called it, "Feel Hooray") he had heard that Teague Poteet had been arrested and carried to Atlanta by a man named Woodward. No one had told him this, but he heard people talking about it wherever he went in Villa Ray, and there seemed to be a good deal of excitement in the settlement.
Cohen was a droll customer, the revenue officers thought, and the longer they chatted with him the droller he became. First and last they drew from him what they considered to be some very important information. But most important of all was the report of the arrest of Teague Poteet. The deputies congratulated themselves. They understood the situation thoroughly, and their course was perfectly plain. Poteet, in endeavouring to escape from them, had fallen into the clutches of Woodward, and their best plan was to overtake the latter before he reached Atlanta with his prize, and thus share in the honour of the capture. With this purpose in view, they took a dram all round and turned their horses" heads down the mountain.
Cohen certainly was a droll fellow. He stood in the road until the revenue men had disappeared. Then he unbuckled the straps of his pack, dropped it upon the ground, and sat down upon a boulder. With his head between his hands, he appeared to be lost in thought, but he was only listening. He remained listening until after the sounds of the horses"
feet had died away.
Then he carried his precious pack a little distance from the roadside, covered it with leaves, listened a moment to be sure that the deputies were not returning, and then proceeded to a. little ravine in the side of the mountain where the Moonshiners lay. He had been waiting nearly two days where the revenue men found him, and his story of the capture of Teague Poteet was concocted for the purpose of sending the posse back down the mountain the way they came. If they had gone on a mile further they would have discovered signs of the Moonshiners, and this discovery would have led to a b.l.o.o.d.y encounter, if not to the capture of the leaders.
The deputies rode down the mountain in the best of spirits. They had accomplished more than any other posse; they had frightened the Moonshiners of Hog Mountain to their hiding-places, and not a deputy had been killed, or even wounded. The clatter they made as they journeyed along attracted the attention of Ab Bonder, a boy about fifteen, who happened to be squirrel-hunting, and he stepped into the road to get a good view of them. He was well grown for his age, and his single-barrelled shot-gun looked like a rifle. The revenue men halted at once. They suspected an ambuscade. Experience had taught them that the Moonshiners would fight when the necessity arose, and they held a council of war. The great gawky boy, with the curiosity of youth and ignorance combined, stood in the road and watched them. When they proceeded toward him in a compact body, he pa.s.sed on across the road.
Hearing a command to halt, he broke into a run, and endeavoured to make his way across a small clearing that bordered the road. Several of the deputies fired their guns in the air, but one, more reckless than the rest, aimed directly at the fugitive, and Ab Bonner fell, shot through and through.
Viewed in its relations to all the unfortunate events that have marked the efforts of the Government officials to deal with the violators of the revenue laws from a political point of view, the shooting of this ignorant boy was insignificant enough. But it was important to Hog Mountain. For a moment the deputy-marshals were stunned and horrified at the result of their thoughtlessness. Then they dismounted and bore the boy to the roadside again and placed him under the shade of a tree.
His blood shone upon the leaves, and his sallow, shrunken face told a pitiful tale of terror, pain, and death.
The deputy-marshals mounted their horses and rode steadily and swiftly down the mountain, and by nightfall they were far away. But there was no need of any special haste. The winds that stirred the trees could carry no messages. The crows flying over, though they made a great outcry, could tell no tales. Once the boy raised his hand and cried "Mammy!" but there was no one to hear him. And though ten thousand ears should listen, the keenest could hear him no more He became a part of the silence--the awful, mysterious silence--that sits upon the hills and shrouds the mountains.
This incident in the tumultuous experience of Hog Mountain--the killing of Ab Bonner was merely an incident--had a decisive effect upon the movements of ex-Deputy Woodward. When Jake Cohen succeeded in turning the revenue officials back, the mountaineers made themselves easy for the day and night, and next morning prepared to go to their homes. Some of them lived on one side of Hog Mountain, and some on the other. They called themselves neighbours, and yet they lived miles apart, and it so happened that, with few exceptions, each went in a different direction.
Teague Poteet gave the signal--
"Come, Cap," he said to Woodward, "yess be a-traipsiu". Puss"ll be a-puttin" on biskits for supper before we git thar if we don"t push on.
Be good to yourse"f, boys, an" don"t raise no fracas."
Poteet and Woodward rode off together. That afternoon, half a mile from Poteet"s, they met a woman running in the road, crying and wringing her hands wildly. She moved like one distracted. She rushed past them, crying--
"They uv killed little Ab! They uv killed him. Oh, Lordy! they uv killed little Ab!"
She ran up the road a little distance and then came running back; she had evidently recognised Poteet. As she paused in the road near them, her faded calico sun-bonnet hanging upon her shoulders, her grey hair falling about her face, her wrinkled arms writhing in response to a grief too terrible to contemplate, she seemed related in some vague way to the prophets of old who were a.s.sailed by fierce sorrows. Here was something more real and more awful than death itself. Woodward felt in his soul that the figure, the att.i.tude, the misery of this poor old woman were all Biblical.
"Oh, Teague," she cried, "they uv killed him! They uv done killed my little Ab! Oh, Lordy! that mortal hain"t a-livin" that he ever done any harm. What did they kill him for?" Then she turned to Woodward: "Oh, Mister, Mister! _please_ tell me what he done. _I"m_ the one that made the liquor, _I"m_ the one. Oh, Lordy! what did they kill little Ab for?"
Teague Poteet dismounted from his horse, took the woman firmly but gently by the arm, and made her sit down by the side of the road. Then, when she was more composed, she told the story of finding her son"s body. It was a terrible story to hear from the lips of the mother, but she grew quieter after telling it, and presently went on her way. The two men watched her out of sight.
"I"ll tell you what, Cap," said Teague, as he flung himself into the saddle, "they er houndin" airter us. They er "buzin" the wimmin an"
killin" the childern; stidder carryin" out the law, they er gwine about a-shootin" an" a-murderin". So _fur, so good_. Well, now, lemme tell you: the hawk "a done lit once too much in the chicken-lot. This is a free country. I hain"t a-layin" no blame on you. Me an" Sis stood by you when the boys s"ore they wuz a-gwine to rattle you up. We made "em behave the"rse"ves, an" I hain"t a-blamin" you, but they er houndin"
airter us, an" ef I wuz you I wouldn"t stay on this hill nary "nuther minnit longer than it "ud take me to git offn it. When the boys git wind er this onG.o.dly bizness, they ull be mighty hard to hol". I reckon maybe you"ll be a-gwine down about Atlanty. Well, you thes watch an"
see what stan" the Govern_ment"s_ gwineter take "bout Ab Bonner, an" ef hit don"t take no stan", you thes drap in thar an" tell "em how you seed er ole man name Teague Poteet, an" _he_ "lowed that the revenue fellers better not git too clost ter Hog Mountain, bekaze the hidin"-out bizness is done played. The law what"s good enough fer pore little Ab Bonner is good enough fer the men what shot "im."
They rode on until they came to Poteet"s house.
"We"ll thes go in an" git a snack," said Teague, "an" airter that your best gait is a gallop."
But Woodward declined. He was dazed as well as humiliated, and he had no desire to face Sis Poteet. He pictured to himself the scorn and bitterness with which she would connect his presence on the Mountain with the murder of Ab Bonner, and he concluded to ride on to Gullettsville. He took Teague Poteet by the hand.
"Good-bye, old man," he said; "I shall remember you. Tell Miss Sis--well, tell Miss Sis good-bye." With that he wheeled his horse and rode rapidly toward Gullettsville.
It was a fortunate ride for him, perhaps. The wrath of Hog Mountain was mightily stirred when it heard of the killing of Ab Bonner, and Woodward would have fared badly at its hands. The wrath of others was stirred also. The unfortunate affair took the shape of a political issue, and thus the hands of justice were tied. But all this is a matter of history, and need not be dwelt upon.
In the meantime, as the days pa.s.sed, Teague Poteet became dimly and uncomfortably conscious that a great change had come over Sis. One day she would be as bright and as gay as the birds in the trees; the next, she would be quiet, taciturn, and apparently depressed. As Teague expressed, "One minnit hit"s Sis, an" the nex" hit"s some un else."
Gradually the fits of depression grew more and more frequent and lasted longer. She was abstracted and thoughtful, and her petulance disappeared altogether. The contrast resulting from this change was so marked that it would have attracted the attention of a person of far less intelligence than Teague Poteet. He endeavoured to discuss the matter with his wife, but Puss Poteet was not the woman to commit herself. She was a Mountain Sphinx.
"I"m afeard Sis is ailin"," said Teague, upon one occasion.
"Well," replied Puss, "she ain"t complainin"."
"That"s. .h.i.t," Teague persisted; "she hain"t complainin". That"s what pesters me. She looks lonesome, an" she"s got one er them kinder fur-away looks in her eyes that gives me the all-overs." The Sphinx rubbed its snuff and swung in its rocking-chair. "Some days she looks holp up, an" then ag"in she looks cas" down. I "low"d maybe you mought know what ailed her."
"Men folks," said Puss, manipulating her snuff-swab slowly and deliberately, "won"t never have no sense while the worl" stan"s. Ef a "oman ain"t gwine hether an" yan", rippity-clippity, day in an" day out, an" half the night, they er on the"r heads. Wimmen hain"t men."
"That"s so," replied league gravely, "they hain"t. Ef they wuz, the men "ud be in a mighty nice fix."
"They"d have some sense," said Puss.
"Likely so. Yit "oman er man kin sliet one eye an" tell that Sis looks droopy, an" when Sis looks droopy, I know in reason sump"n" nuther ails her."
"Well, goodness knows; I wish in my soul somebody"d shet one eye an"
look at me," exclaimed Puss, with a touch of jealousy in her tone. "I traipse "roun" this hill ontell I"m that wore out I kin skacely drag one foot alrter t"other, an" I don"t never hear n.o.body up an" ast what ails me. It"s Sis, Sis, Sis, all the time, an" eternally. Ef the calf"s fat, the ole cow ain"t got much choice betwixt the quogmire an" the tan-vat."
"Lord, how you do run on," said the iron-grey giant, rubbing his knuckles together sheepishly. "You don"t know Sis ef you go on that away. Many"s the time that chile "ud foller me up an" say, "Pap, ef you see my shawl a-haugin" out on the fence, Puss"ll be asleep, an" don"t you come a-lumberin" in an" wake her up, nuther." An" many"s the time she"d come out an" meet me, an" up an" say, "Pap, Puss has takin" an"
bin a-mopin" all day long; yess you an" me go in an" fetch her up." An"
bless your life," Teague continued, addressing some imaginary person on the other side of the fireplace, "when me an" Sis sets our heads for to fetch anybody up, they er thes natchully erbleeged ter come."
Puss rubbed her snuff and swayed to and fro in her rocking-chair, disdaining to make any reply to this array of facts and arguments; and Teague was as ignorant as ever of the cause of the queer change in his daughter. Perhaps, as becomes a dutiful husband, he should have retorted upon his complaining wife with complaints of his own; but his interests and his isolation had made him thoughtful and forbearing. He had the trait of gentleness which frequently sweetens and equalises large natures. He remembered that behind whatever complaints-- reasonable or unreasonable--Puss might make, there existed a stronghold of affection and tenderness; he remembered that her whole life had been made up of a series of small sacrifices; he knew that she was ready, whenever occasion made it necessary, to cast aside her snuff-swab and her complaints, and go to the rack without a murmur.
But Teague was by no means satisfied with the condition of affairs, so far as Sis was concerned. He said no more to his wife, but he kept his eyes open. The situation was baffling to the point of irritation, but Teague betrayed neither uneasiness nor restlessness. He hung about the house more, and he would frequently walk in quietly when the women thought he was miles away.
There were times when Sis ignored his presence altogether, but as a general thing she appeared to relish his companionship. Sometimes at night, after her mother had gone to bed, she would bring her chair close to Teague"s, and rest her head upon his shoulder, while he smoked his pipe and gazed in the fire. Teague enjoyed these occasions to the utmost, and humoured his daughter"s slightest wish, responding to her every mood and fancy. If she talked, he talked; if she was silent, he said nothing. Once she dropped asleep with her head on his arm, and Teague sat holding her thus half the night. When she did awake she upbraided herself so earnestly for imposing on her old pappy (as she called him) that Teague yawned, and stretched himself, and rubbed his eyes, and pretended that he, too, had been asleep.
"Lordy, honey! I wuz that gone tell I didn"t know whe"er I "uz rolled up in a haystack er stretched out in a feather-bed. I reckon ef you"d "a" listened right clost you"d "a" heern me sno". I thes laid back an"
howled at the rafters, an" once-t er twice-t I wuz afeard I mought waken up Puss."