Ben nodded. "I hopes ter conscience she"ll break his neck," he declared cruelly.
His mother took instant alarm. She turned and looked at him with a face expressive of the keenest anxiety. ""Pears like to me ez the only reason Thad kin be so late a-gittin" back air jes" "kase it air a toler"ble aggervatin" job a-fotchin" of dad home," she said, striving to rea.s.sure herself.
"That air a true word "bout"n dad, ennyhow," Ben a.s.sented bitterly.
His old grandfather suddenly lifted up his voice.
"This night," said the graybeard from out the chimney corner,--"this night, forty years ago, my brother, Ephraim Grimes, fell dead on this cabin floor, an" no man sence kin mark the cause."
A pause ensued. The rain fell. The pallid, shuddering mists looked in at the window.
"Ye ain"t a-thinkin"," cried the woman tremulously, "ez the night air one app"inted fur evil?"
The old man did not answer.
"This night," he croaked, leaning over the glowing fire, and kindling his long-stemmed cob-pipe by dexterously scooping up with its bowl a live coal,--"this night, twenty-six years ago, thar war eleven sheep o"
mine--ez war teched in the head, or somehows disabled from good sense--an" they jumped off"n the bluff, one arter the other, an" fell haffen way down the mounting, an" bruk thar fool necks "mongst the boulders. They war dead. Thar shearin"s never kem ter much account nuther. "Twar powerful cur"ous, fust an" last."
The woman made a gesture of indifference. "I ain"t a-settin" of store by critters when humans is--is--whar they ain"t hearn from."
But Ben was susceptible of a "critter" scare.
"I hope, now," he exclaimed, alarmed, "ez that thar triflin" no-"count Thad Grimes ain"t a-goin" ter let my filly lame herself, nor nothin", a-travelin" with her this dark night, ez seems ter be a night fur things ter happen on ennyhow. Oh, shucks! shucks!" he continued impatiently, "I jes" feels like thar ain"t no use o" my tryin" ter live along."
Three of the children who habitually slept in the shed-room had started off to go to bed. As they opened the connecting door, there suddenly resounded a wild commotion within. They shrieked with fright, and banged the door against a strong force which was beginning to push from the other side.
The old grandfather rose, pale and agitated, his pipe falling from his nerveless clasp.
"This night," he said, with white lips and mechanical utterance,--"this night"--
"Satan is in the shed-room!" shouted the three small boys, as they held fast to the door with a strength far beyond their age and weight.
Nevertheless, they were hardly able to cope with the strength on the other side of the door, and it was alternately forced slightly ajar, and then closed with a resounding slam. Once, as the firelight flickered into the dark shed-room, the ignorant, superst.i.tious mountaineers had a fleeting glimpse of an object there which convinced them: they beheld great gleaming, blazing eyes, a burnished hoof, and--yes--a flirting tail.
"I believe it is Satan himself!" cried Ben, with awe in his voice.
In the wild confusion and bewilderment, Ben was somehow vaguely aware that Satan had often been in the shed-room before,--in the antechamber of his own heart. Whenever this heart of his was full of unkindness, and hardened against his brother, although those better fraternal instincts which he kept repressed and dwarfed might repudiate this cruelty under the pretext that he did not really mean it, still the great principle of evil was there in the moral shed-room, clamoring for entrance at the inner doors. And this, we may safely say, may apply to wiser people than poor Ben.
In the midst of the general despair and fright, something suddenly whinnied. At the sound the three small boys fell in a limp, exhausted heap on the floor, and, as the door no longer offered resistance, the unknown visitor pranced in: it was the filly, snorting and tossing her mane, and once more whinnying shrilly for her supper.
In a moment Ben understood the whole phenomenon. Thad had left the barn door unfastened, and, when that terrible flash of lightning came and the wind arose, the frightened animal had instantly fled to the house for safety. She had doubtless pushed open the back door of the shed-room easily enough, but it had closed behind her, and she had remained there a supperless prisoner.
The small boys picked themselves up from among the filly"s hoofs, with disconnected exclamations of "Wa-a-a-l, sir!" while Ben led the animal out, with a growing impression that he would try to "live along" for a while, at all events.
He had led Satan out of the moral shed-room, as well. The reappearance of the filly without Thad had raised a great anxiety about his brother"s continued absence. All at once he began to feel as if those brutal wishes of his were prophetic,--as if they were endowed with a malignant power, and could actually pursue poor Thad to some violent end. He did not understand now how he could have framed the words.
When a fellow really likes his brother,--and most fellows do,--there is scant use or grace or common-sense in keeping up, from mere carelessness, or through an irritable habit, a continual bickering, for these germs of evil are possessed of a marvelous faculty for growth, and some day their gigantic deformities will confront you in deeds of which you once believed yourself incapable.
Ben"s hands were trembling as he folded a blanket, and laid it on the animal"s back to serve instead of a saddle.
"I"m a-goin" ter the still-house ter see ef Thad ever got thar," he said, when his mother appeared at the door.
He added, "I"m a-gittin" sorter skeered ez su"thin" mought hev happened ter him."
His grandfather hobbled out into the little porch. "Them roads air turrible rough fur that thar filly, ez ain"t fairly broke good yit, nor used ter travel," he suggested.
"I"d gin four hunderd fillies, ef I hed "em, jes" ter know that thar boy air safe an" sound," Ben declared, as he mounted.
He took the short cut, judging that, at the point where it crossed the river, the stream was still fordable. When he heard his brother"s piteous cries for help, he quaked to think what might have happened to Thad if he had not recognized the presence of Satan in the moral shed-room, and summarily ejected him. The rainfall had been sufficient to aggregate considerable water in the gullies about the sink-hole, and these, emptying into the cavity and sending a continuous stream over the boy, had served to chill him through and through, and he had a pretty fair chance of being drowned, or dying from cold and exhaustion. Ben pressed on to the still-house at the best speed he could make, and such of the moonshiners as were half sober came out with ropes and a barrel, which they lowered into the cavity. Thad managed to crawl into the barrel, and, after several ineffectual attempts, he was drawn up through the sink-hole.
There was no formal reconciliation between the two boys. It was enough for Ben to feel Thad"s reluctance to unloose his eager clutch upon his brother"s arms, even after he had been lifted out upon the firm ground.
And Thad knew that that complicated sound in Ben"s throat was a sob, although, for the sake of the men who stood by, he strove to seem to be coughing.
"Right smart of an idjit, now, ain"t ye?" demanded Ben, hustling back, so to speak, the tears that sought to rise in his eyes.
"Waal, stranger, how"s yer filly?" retorted Thad, laughing in a gaspy fashion.
There was a tone of forgiveness in the inquiry. The answer caught the same spirit.
"Middlin",--thanky,--jes" middlin"," said Ben.
And then they and "dad" fared home together by the light of the moonshiners" lantern.
BORROWING A HAMMER
On a certain bold crag that juts far over a steep wooded mountain slope a red light was seen one moonless night in June. Sometimes it glowed intensely among the gray mists which hovered above the deep and sombre valley; sometimes it faded. Its life was the breath of the bellows, for a blacksmith"s shop stands close beside the road that rambles along the brink of the mountain. Generally after sunset the forge is dark and silent. So when three small boys, approaching the log hut through the gloomy woods, heard the clink! clank! clink! clank! of the hammers, and the metallic echo among the cliffs, they stopped short in astonishment.
"Thar now!" exclaimed Abner Ryder desperately; "dad"s at it fur true!"
"Mebbe he"ll go away arter a while, Ab," suggested Jim Gryce, another of the small boys. "Then that"ll gin us our chance."
"Waal, I reckon we kin stiffen up our hearts ter wait," said Ab resignedly.
All three sat down on a log a short distance from the shop, and presently they became so engrossed in their talk that they did not notice when the blacksmith, in the pauses of his work, came to the door for a breath of air. They failed to discreetly lower their voices, and thus they had a listener on whose attention they had not counted.
"Ye see," observed Ab in a high, shrill pipe, "dad sets a heap o" store by his tools. But dad, ye know, air a mighty slack-twisted man. He gits his tools lost" (reprehensively), "he wastes his nails, an" then he "lows ez how it war _me_ ez done it."
He paused impressively in virtuous indignation. A murmur of surprise and sympathy rose from his companions. Then he recommenced.
"Dad air the crankiest man on this hyar mounting! He won"t lend me none o" his tools nowadays,--not even that thar leetle hammer o" his"n. An"
I"m obleeged ter hev that thar leetle hammer an" some nails ter fix a box fur them young squir"ls what we cotched. So we"ll jes" hev ter go ter his shop of a night when he is away, an"--an"--an" borry it!"
The blacksmith, a tall, powerfully built man, of an aspect far from jocular, leaned slightly out of the door, peering in the direction where the three tow-headed urchins waited. Then he glanced within at a leather strap, as if he appreciated the appropriateness of an intimate relation between these objects. But there was no time for pleasure now. He was back in his shop in a moment.
His next respite was thus entertained:--