"We got to go in thar. Hain"t no other way. When I say the word start comin" on an" firin" as you come. He can"t git all of us. Mebby he won"t get airy one. "T"ain"t no use a talkin" to him nohow."
Florence caught her breath. Her heart paused for a second, then went racing. Her knees trembled. She had heard much of mountain feud fights.
Now she was about to witness one. Worse than that, she must be directly in the path of the bullets. At realization of this she wanted to flee, but her feet would not obey her. So there she stood as if rooted to the spot.
Though her feet were still, her brain was racing. She had recognized the voice of the last speaker, Ransom Turner. A good man does not start a feud fight over a trifle. Why had they come? Who was this person they had come to demand? Was it a friend, or some outlaw fleeing from justice? She did not have long to wait.
"Just a minute, strangers," came in calm tones from within the gates.
"You kin get me maybe-seem"s how there"s a army of you-but count on it, I"ll get a lot of you first. I"m the shootinest man as I reckon has most ever made a crop on Laurel Branch. But I"m plumb peaceably minded, too.
Hain"t rarin" up fer no killin". Now what I wants to know is, who might that air person be that you all come after?"
"You know well enough," drawled Ransom Turner. "But so"s you"ll know agin", I"ll tell you. Hit"s our teacher, Florence Ormsby."
Florence Ormsby! The girl"s own name sounded strange to her. So they were risking their lives to save her! And she was an outsider! A great wave of dizziness came over her. She fought it off. She tried to speak. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. Powerless to move, she stood there gasping.
"Come on, boys! "T"ain"t no use foolin" further."
The grim tones of the doughty little leader loosed the girl"s tongue.
Then, with tones that were little less than shrieks, she cried:
"Ransom! Ransom Turner! Don"t! Don"t do it! I"m here. It"s all right. I"m coming out."
After this shouted speech that awoke shrill echoes along the mountain side, there fell a moment of breathless silence, such a silence as is perhaps seldom felt save on a battlefield after the declaration of a truce.
Then, in a tone that told of deeper emotional struggle, there came from Ransom Turner"s lips:
"Are you sh.o.r.e, Miss Florence? Are hit all right?"
"Quite all right," she said in as steady a tone as she could command.
"See! I am coming down."
Moving quietly, she pa.s.sed the last tall pine, the last clump of rhododendrons within the gate, then the ma.s.sive portals, and a moment later found herself among her own people, free.
Free! How good it seemed! And yet, as between two silent mountaineers she walked back to the settlement and the whipsawed house, she felt the burdens of these simple people come back to her shoulders like a crushing weight.
"To-morrow," she whispered. "The trial and the election, and then what?"
Later that night, after a joyous reunion and a splendid supper in the whipsawed cabin, she lay once more in her own bed, staring up at the ceiling where the flashes of a dying fire played. Then it was that she noted something strange. The board they had once taken from the ceiling that they might get into the attic had been once more removed, then replaced. She knew this, for this time it had been put back with the ends reversed.
Vaguely her mind played with this thought. Who had been up there? What had they found? Georgia gold? Confederate gold?
She wondered about the election; her trial; Bud Wax. Wondered a little about Marion, who had gone down the branch to stay all night with Patience Madden, the oldest girl in their school. Was she sleeping safely in Patience"s cabin? In this strange community no one seemed quite safe.
She wondered a little about the deed for the Powell coal land and the commission they were to receive-sometime. When would that be? She wondered if she would ever see any of the men who had kidnapped her. Her mental picture of them was very vivid.
"If I ever saw them again I would know them," she told herself.
At that she turned over and fell asleep.
The adventures of the night for Florence were done; for Marion they were now about to begin.
CHAPTER XIV HALLIE KIDNAPPED
Marion was wide awake. She lay beneath home-woven blankets in Patience Madden"s cabin. The room was dark. It was night; time for sleep. The mountain side was very still. Even the stream, Pounding Mill Creek, tumbling down Little Black Mountain, murmured softly.
"I should sleep," she told herself. "To-morrow is the big day. Election.
Trial. One big day. Twenty-for hours must decide all."
Do coming events truly cast their shadows before them, and do their shadows disturb us, rob us of our sleep? However that may be, Marion could not sleep.
At last, rising noiselessly, for Patience slept peacefully in the narrow bed next to her own, she threw a blanket over her shoulders and stole out upon the porch. Here she dropped into a rustic chair to sit staring dreamily at the moon.
"Old moon," she whispered, "what do you see to-night?"
Had the moon answered her question she would have sprung to her feet in alarm. As it was, she sat quite still, sat there until with a sudden start she caught the slow and steady tramp of horses on the trail below.
"Who-who can that be?" she whispered as she shrank far back into the shadows.
She was soon enough to know. Two horses swung around a curve in the trail not five rods from the cabin. At that instant the moon, coming out from behind a filmy cloud, shone full upon them.
"A tall slim man and a short one," she thought to herself. "Sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I-" She started suddenly. Florence had told her of them. These were the men who had held her prisoner when she had gone to the back of Pine Mountain to get an option on the Powell coal tract.
A second shock following this one came near knocking her from her chair.
The tall man carried a bundle-something wrapped in a blanket.
"A child," she whispered. A chill ran up her spine. She hardly knew why.
A second later she knew. As the horses wheeled sharply to avoid a great boulder that lay against the trail, the face of the child, lighted up by the moon, became plainly visible.
"Little Hallie!" Marion exclaimed under her breath.
In an instant she was out of her chair and in the room shaking the mountain girl and whispering hoa.r.s.ely:
"Patience! Patience! Wake up! They"ve kidnapped little Hallie!"
"Wha-where? Why?" the mountain girl stammered, still half asleep.
Sinking down upon the bed and burying her face in her hands, Marion tried to think. Little Hallie had been kidnapped. Why? For ransom? Nothing seemed more absurd. Who would pay? The child had been poorly dressed when she was brought to their cabin.
"And yet," Marion thought, "what do we really know of her?"
She caught herself short up. This was no time for speculation. What was to be done? There were no men in the cabin. She was alone with the sixteen year old mountain girl. The nearest cabin was a half mile down the creek.
"Patience," she said suddenly, "there are no men here to follow them.
They have kidnapped little Hallie. They can"t mean her any good. Shall we go?"