Читать книгу The Tempering - Charles Neville Buck - Страница 4

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Backward he edged to the far side of the rock, and on he went by a detour which, in due course, brought him out to the road once more at that panel of fence where Boone Wellver still sat perched in the deep preoccupation of his thoughts. These reflections focussed about the stranger who had lately ridden by, and as Gregory paused, with no revealing sign in his face of the events of the past half-hour, the boy blurted out the fulness of his interest.

"Asa, did ye find out who is he? Did ye see thet sward he hed hangin' ter his saddle, an' did ye note all them qu'ar contraptions he was totin' along with him?"

"I didn't hev overly much speech with him," was the grave response. "But he 'lowed he'd done come from acrost ther waters—from somewhars in t'other world. I reckon he's done travelled wide."

"His looks hain't none common nuther!" Boone's eyes were sparkling; his imagination galloping free and uncurbed. "I've done read stories about kings an' sich-like, travellin' hither an' yon unbeknownst ter common folks. What does ye reckon, Asa, mout he be su'thin' like thet? A king or su'thin?"

"Ef so be he's a king," opined Asa Gregory drily, "he's shore done picked him out a God-fersaken place ter go a'travellin' in." The dark eyes riffled for a moment into a hint of covert raillery. "Ye didn't chanst ter discarn no crown, did ye, Booney, pokin' a gold prong or two up outen them saddle pockets?"

Boone Wellver flushed brick-red and straightway his words fell into a hot disclaimer of gullibility. "I hain't no plum, daft idjit. I didn't, ter say, really think he was a king—but his looks wasn't none common."

The older kinsman granted that contention and for a while they talked of Victor McCalloway, but at length Asa shifted the subject.

"A week come Monday," he informed the boy, "thar's a'goin' ter be a monstrous big speakin' at Marlin Town. Ther Democrat candidate fer Governor aims ter speechify an' I 'lowed mebby ye'd love ter go along with me an' listen at him."

Whenever Asa yielded to the temptation of teasing his young cousin he hastened to make amends for the indulgence and now the boy's face was ashine with anticipation.

Customarily in Kentucky from the opening of the campaign to the day of election the tide and sweep of political battle runs hot and high. But in that autumn of 1899 all precedents of party feeling were engulfed in a tidal wave of bitterness and endowed with a new ferocity ominously akin to war. The gathering storm centred and beat about the head of one man whose ambition for gubernatorial honours was the core and essence of the strife. He was, in the confident estimate of his admirers, a giant whose shoulders towered above the heads of his lesser compatriots. An election law bore his name—and his adversaries gave insistent warning that it surrendered the state, bound hand and foot, to a triumvirate of his own choosing.

Into the wolf-like battle-royal of his party's convention he had gone seemingly the weakest of three aspirants for the Democratic nomination. Out of it, over disrupted party-elements, he had emerged—triumphant.

Whether one called him righteous crusader or self-seeking demagogue, the fact stood baldly clear that his name with an "ism" attached had become the single issue in that State, and that hero-worship and hatred attended upon its mention.

Back to the people of the inaccessible hills, living apart, aloof and neglected, came some of the murmurs of the tempest that shook the lowlands. Here at the edge of a normally Democratic State which had in earlier times held slaves and established an aristocracy, the hillsmen living by the moil of their own sweat had hated alike slave and slave-holder and had remained solidly Republican. For them it was enough that William Goebel was not of their party. Basing their judgment on that premise, they passed on with an uncomplicated directness to the conclusion that the deleterious things said of him by envenomed orators were assertions of gospel truth.

Now that man was carrying his campaign into the enemy's country. Realizing without illusion the temper of the audience which would troop in from creek-bed and cove and the branch-waters "back of beyond," he was to speak in Marlin Town where the cardinal faith of the mountains is, "hate thine enemy!"

In the court-house square of Marlin Town, under the shadow of high-flung hills, had gathered close-packed battalions of listeners. Some there were who carried with them their rifles and some who looked as foreign to even these rude streets as nomads ridden in from the desert.

A brass band had come with the candidate's special train and blared out its stirring message. There was a fluttering of flags and a brave showing of transparencies, and to Boone Wellver, aged fifteen, as he hung shadow-close at Asa Gregory's elbow, it all seemed the splendour of panoply and the height of pageantry.

From the hotel door, as the man and boy passed it, emerged two gentlemen who were clothed in the smoother raiment of "Down below," and Boone pointed them out to his companion.

"Who air they, Asa?" he whispered, and his kinsman carelessly responded:

"One of 'em's named Masters. He's a coal-mine boss—but I hain't never seed t'other one, afore now."

Strolling along the narrow plank runway that did service as a sidewalk, the boy glimpsed also the mysterious stranger who had ridden in on a mule, with a canvas-covered sword at his saddle ring.

Then the fanfare of the band fell silent and a thin figure in an ancient frock coat stepped forward on the platform itself and raised its hands to shout: "Fellow Citizens and Kentuckians of Marlin County!"

Ranged importantly behind the draped bunting stood the corporal's guard of native Democratic leaders—leaders who were well-nigh without followers—and who now stood as local sponsors for the Candidate himself.

Boone caught his breath and listened, his eager eyes conspicuous among the immobile and stolid faces of the unresponsive throng as the speaker let flow his words of encomium.

Seeking to compensate by his own vehemence for the unreceptiveness of his audience, the thin master of ceremonies heaped the Ossa of fulsomeness upon the Pelion of praise. "And now, men of Marlin," he shouted in his memorized peroration, "now I have the distinguished honour of presenting to you the man whose loins are girt in the people's fight—the—the—ahem,—unterrified champeen of the Commonwealth's yeomanry—. Gentlemen, the next Governor of Kentucky!"

A peroration without applause is like a quick-step beat upon a loose drum-head, and an the local sponsor stood back in the dispiriting emptiness of dead silence—unbroken by a single hand-clap—his face fell. For several moments that quiet hung like a paralyzing rebuff, then from the outskirts of the crowd a liquor-thickened voice bellowed—"Next gov'nor—of hell!"

To the front of the platform, with that derisive introduction, calmly—even coldly, stepped a dark, smooth-shaven man, over whose stocky shoulders and well-rounded chest a frock coat was tightly buttoned.

For a while the Candidate stood looking out, gauging his audience, and from him there seemed to emanate an assurance of power before his lips parted. A heavy lock of coal-black hair fell over his forehead, across almost disdainfully cold eyes went sooty lashes, and dark brows met above the prominent nose. The whole face seemed drawn in bold charcoal strokes, uncompromising of line and feature—a portrayal of force.

Then the resonant voice broke silence, and though it came calmly and moderately pitched, it went out clarion-clear over the crowd like the note of a fox horn.

"Some one out there shouted—'Next governor of hell!'" he began without preamble. "I grant you that if any region needs improved government it is hell, and if there is a state on this earth where a man might hope to qualify himself for that task, it is this state. Let me try that first, my friend. I believe in myself, but I am only human."

He launched forthright into arraignment of his enemies with sledge-blows of denunciation untempered by any concession to time, place or condition, and though scowls grew vindictively black about him, he knew that he was holding his audience.

He was a Vulcan forging thunders with words and destructive batteries of bolts with phrases, and Boone Wellver—trembling with excitement as a pointer puppy trembles with the young eagerness of the covey-scent in his nostrils—seemed to be in the presence of a miracle; the miracle of eloquence.

"My God," breathed the less impressionable Asa Gregory under his breath, "but thet feller hes a master gift fer lyin'!"

At the end, with one clenched fist raised high, the speaker thundered out his final words of defiance: "The fight is on, and I believe in fighting. I ask no quarter and I fear no foe!"

Again he paused, and again save for the valiant enthusiasm on the platform at his back, he met with no response except a grim and negative silence.

But this disconcerting stillness was abruptly ripped asunder by a pistol shot and a commotion of confused voices, rising where figures began to eddy and mill at the outskirts. The reception committee closed hastily and protectingly about the candidate, whose challenge seemed to have been accepted by some irresponsible gun-fighter, but he thrust them back with a face of unaltered and stony calmness. Though he had finished, he continued to stand at the front with hands idly resting on the platform rail as if meaning to demonstrate his contempt for anything like retreat.

While he still tarried there a tall figure elbowed its way through the crowd until it stood near. It was the figure of Asa Gregory, and, raising a hand for recognition, it called out in a full-chested voice: "Thet shot war fired by a feller thet war full of white licker—an' they're takin' him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine hain't hardly converted nobody hyarabouts—but we don't aim ter insult no visitor."

Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house to remain until he could arrange a more permanent residence. The purpose that lay behind his coming was one which he had not felt called upon to explain, and though he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he had come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a necessary understanding.

They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his lot, content with their remoteness, and it was something that here a man could lose himself from questions touching the past, so long as he answered frankly those of the present. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and the bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.

Before the snow flew the newcomer was to be housed under his own roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal announcement that he was to have a "working" on the land he had bought, the community was present, armed with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under the auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy patron saint, among them.

There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose enmities were deep and ancient, but who today were restrained by the common spirit of volunteer service to a neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the gathering at McCalloway's "house-raising" should not bear the prejudicial colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike should have a hand in the activities which were going robustly forward at the head of Snag Ridge.

Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and no builders' union afforded or withheld labour, but every man was carpenter and artisan in his own right, and some were "practiced corner-men" as well.

Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer dream along the skyline their axes rang in accompaniment to their homely jests, and the earnest whine of their saws went up with the minors of voices raised in the plaintive strains of folk-lore ballads.

The only wage accepted was food and drink. They would have thought as readily of asking payment for participation in the rough festivities of the "infare" with which the mountain groom brings his bride from her wedding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his saddle.

Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the roadway, would perhaps eye each other with suspicion. Riding on, after greetings, they would go with craned necks, neither trusting the other to depart unwatched, but today the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over them and the timbers that went up were raised by the hands of friends and enemies alike.

But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight that the simple code had not safeguarded and that had gained headway before his interference.

Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two boys rolling in a smother of dust and, until he remembered that the hill code of "fist and skull" bars neither shod-toe nor bared tooth, he was shocked at the unmitigated savagery of the combat.

The strenuous pair rolled in a mad embrace, and as he approached, one of the boys—whose back alone he could see—came to the top of the writhing heap. While this one gouged, left handed, at eyes which the other attempted to cover, his right hand whipped out a jack-knife which he sought to open with his teeth. Out of the commotion came an animal-like incoherence of snarls and panting profanity, and Victor McCalloway caught the top boy by his shoulder and dragged him forcibly away from what threatened to be maiming or worse.

So pried from his victim, on the verge of victory, the boy with a bloody and unrecognized face stood for an instant heaving of breast and infuriated, then wrenching himself free from the detaining hand, he gave a leap as sudden as that of a frightened buck and disappeared behind the screen of the laurel.

The other figure, with an eye blackened and bleeding from the raw scratches of finger-nails about the lids, came more slowly to his feet, his breath rasping with passion and exhaustion. He stood there before his would-be rescuer—and McCalloway recognized Boone Wellver.

"I'd hev licked him—so his own mammy wouldn't 'a' knowed him ef ye hadn't 'a' bust in on me," he panted. "I'd done had him down oncet afore an' I war jest erbout ter turn him under ergin."

A light of suppressed drollery glinted into the eyes of the man whose ruddy face remained otherwise unsmiling.

"It looked to me as though you were in a situation where nothing could save you but reinforcements—or surrender," he commented, and the heaving body of the rescued boy grew rigid while his begrimed face flamed with chagrin.

"Surrender—knock under—ter him!" He spat out the words with a venomous disgust. "Thet feller war a Blair! Did ye ever heer of a Gregory hollerin' 'enough!' ter a Blair, yit!"

McCalloway stood looking down with an amusement which he was considerate enough to mask. He knew that Boone, though his surname was Wellver, was still in all the meaning of feud parlance a Gregory and that in the bitterness of his speech spoke not only individual animosity but generations of vendetta. So he let the lad have his say uninterrupted, and Boone's words ran freshet-like with the churn and tumble of his anger. "Ye jest misjudged he war a'lickin' me, because ye seed him on top an' a'gougin' at my eye. But I'd done been on top o' him—an' I'd a got thar ergin. Ef you'd noted whar I'd done chawed his ear at he wouldn't 'a' looked so good ter ye, I reckon."

"Suppose he had gotten that knife open." The man still spoke with that unpatronizing gravity which carries an untold weight of conviction to a boy's mind. "What would he have done?"

"I reckon he'd a'gutted me—but I didn't nuver aim ter let him git hit open."

"Are you a fighter by habit, Boone?"

Something in the intonation caused the lad to flush afresh, this time with the feeling that he had been unduly bragging, and he responded in a lowered voice. "I hain't nuver tuck part in no gun-battles yit—but when hit comes ter fist an' skull, I'm accounted ter be a right practiced knocker an' I kin rass'le right good. What made ye ask me thet question?"

McCalloway held the angelic blue eyes, so paradoxically set in that wrath-enflamed face, with his own steady gray ones, and spoke quietly:

"Because if you are going to be a fighting man, it's important that you should fight properly, I thought perhaps you'd like to talk to me about it sometime. You see, I've been fighting all my life. It's been my profession."

Over the freckled face surged a wave of captivated interest. The Blair boy was forgotten and the voice thrilled into earnest solicitation. "Would ye l'arn me more about hit some time? What style of fightin' does ye foller?"

"The fair kind, I trust. Civilized warfare. The trade of soldiering."

"I hain't nuver follered no unfa'r sort nuther," disclaimed Boone, and his companion smiled enigmatically while he replied meditatively,

"What is fair or unfair—what is courageous or cowardly—is largely a matter of viewpoint. Some day I dare say you'll go out into the world beyond the hills and out there you'll find that gouging eyes and chewing ears isn't called fair—that shooting an enemy from ambush isn't called courageous."

That was a doctrine, Boone felt, which savoured of sacrilege. If it were categorically true then his own people were cowards—and to his ardent hero worship the Gregories and the Wellvers were exemplars of high bravery, yet this man was no ordinary individual, and he spoke from a wisdom and experience based on a lifetime of soldiering. A seed of dilemma had fallen into the fallow soil of the lad's questioning mind, and as he stood there in a swirl of perplexity he heard the other voice explaining with a sort of comforting reassurance, "As I said, notions of right and wrong vary with locality and custom—but it's good for a man to know more than one standard—one set of ideas. If you ever go out in the world you'll need that knowledge."

After a period of reflection the boy demanded bluntly,

"Whar-at war ye a'soldierin'?"

For the first time, McCalloway's glance hardened and his tone sharpened. He had not meant to throw open the discussion to a wide review of his own past.

"If you and I are going to be good friends, you mustn't ask too many questions," he said curtly. "It doesn't make a boy popular."

"I axes yore pardon; I didn't aim at no offence." The apology was prompt, yet puzzled, and carried with it a note of injured dignity. "I 'lowed ye proffered ter tell me things—an' even ef ye told me all ye knowed, I wouldn't go 'round blabbin' no-whars. I knows how ter hold my own counsel."

This time it was the seasoned man of experience who flushed. He felt that he had first invited and then rebuffed a natural inquiry, and so he, in turn, spoke apologetically: "I shall tell you things that may be useful—but I sha'n't answer every question."

After a long silence Boone spoke again, with the altered voice of diffidence:

"I reckon I hain't got nothin' more ter say," he contributed. "I reckon I'll be farin' on."

"You looked as if you were spilling over with things to say."

"I had hit in head ter say some sev'ral things," admitted the youthful clansman, "but they was all in ther manner of axin' more questions, so I reckon I'll be farin' on."

Victor McCalloway caught the deep hunger for information that showed out of those independent young eyes, and he caught too the untutored instinct of politeness, as genuine and unaffected as that of a desert Sheik, which forced repression. He laid a kindly hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Go ahead and ask your questions, then," he directed, "and I'll answer what I like and refuse to answer the rest. Is that a fair arrangement?"

The brown face glowed. "Thet's es fa'r es airy thing kin be," was the eager response. "I hain't nuver seed nothin' but jest these hyar hills—an' sometimes hit kinderly seems like ter me thet ef I kain't light out an' see all ther balance, I'll jest plain swell up an' bust with ther cravin'."

"You study history—and geography, don't you, Boone?"

"Huh-huh." The tousled head nodded. "But thar's a passel of thet book stuff thet a man kain't believe nohow. Hit ain't reasonable."

"What books have you read?"

"Every single damn one thet I could git my hands on—but thet hain't been no lavish plenty." With a manner of groping for some point of contact with the outer world, he added, "I've got a cousin thet's in ther army, though. He's in ther Philippines right now. Did you soldier in ther Philippines?" Abruptly Boone broke off, and then hastily he prompted as he raised a hand in a gesture of caution, "Don't answer thet thar question ef ye hain't got a mind ter! I jest axed hit heedless-like without studyin' what I war a'doin'."

McCalloway laughed aloud. "I'll answer it. No, I've never soldiered in the Philippines nor anywhere under the American flag. My fighting has all been with what you call the 'outlanders.'"