Читать книгу The Tempering - Charles Buck - Страница 8

On the afternoon of Christmas day, as Boone stood by the gate of Saul's rented patch, looking off across the wet bareness of the fields to the gray and shallow skyline, he was more than a little homesick for the accustomed thickness of forest and peak. He at last saw two mounted figures coming toward him, and recognized General Prince and Anne Masters.

"We rode by to wish you a very merry Christmas," announced the girl, and the General added his smile and greeting.

"I'm – I'm obleeged ter both of you-all," stammered Boone as Anne, leaning over, handed him a package.

"I thought maybe you'd like that. It's a fruit-cake," she informed him, "I brought it because we think our cook makes it just a little bit better than anybody else."

Something told Boone Wellver that the girl, despite her fine clothes and manners, was almost as shy with him as he felt toward her, and in the thought was a sort of reassurance.

"Hit's right charitable-like of ye ter fotch hit ter me," he responded, slowly, and the child hastened to make a denial.

"Oh, no, please don't think that. It wasn't charity at all. It was just – " But as she paused, General Prince interrupted her with a hearty laugh.

"Yes, it was, Anne," he announced. "The word is like the dances. It has a different significance in the hills. For instance when you go to visit your father in Marlin County, Boone will be charitable to you too – or, as we would say, courteous."

"Be ye comin' ter ther mountains?" demanded Boone, and the sudden interest which rang in his voice surprised himself.

Fearful lest he had displayed too much enthusiasm, he withdrew cautiously into his almost stolid manner again. "I'm beholden ter ye fer this hyar sweet cake," he said. "Hit's ther fust Christmas gift I ever got."

The house party ended a few days after that, so the mansion became again a building of shuttered windows and closed doors, and as the old year died and the new one dawned, Saul himself was frequently absent on mysterious journeys to Frankfort.

Sometimes he returned home with a smoulder in his eyes, and once or twice he brought with him a companion, who sat broodingly across the hearth from him and discussed politics, not after the fashion of frank debate but in the sinister undertones of furtiveness. On one particular night in the first week of January, while Saul was entertaining such a visitor, a knock sounded on the door, and when it was opened a man entered, whose dress and bearing were of the more prosperous strata and who seemed to be expected.

Boone overheard the conversation which followed from the obscurity of the chimney corner, where he appeared to be napping and was overlooked.

"I'm right sorry you was called on to journey all the way here from Frankfort," began Saul apologetically, but the other cut him short with a crisp response.

"Don't let that worry you. There are too many eyes and ears in Frankfort. You know what the situation is now, don't you?"

"I knows right well thet ther Democrat aims ter hev ther legislater seat him. He's been balked by ther people an' his own commission – an' now thet's his only chanst."

"The Governor says that if he leaves the state house it will be on a stretcher," announced the visitor defiantly. "But there are more conspiracies against us on foot than I have leisure to explain. The time has come for you mountain men to make good."

Saul rose and paced the floor for a minute, then halted and jerked his head toward the companion whom he had brought home with him that evening.

"Shake hands with Jim Hollins of Clay County," he said briefly. "We've done talked it all over and he understands."

"All right. It's agreed then that you take Marlin and Mr. Hollins takes Clay. I have representatives in the other counties arranged for. These men who come will be fed and housed all right. There'll be special trains to bring them, and ahead of each section will be a pilot engine, in case the news leaks out and anybody tries to use dynamite."

"All right, then. We'll round ye up ther proper kind of men – upstandin' boys thet ain't none timorous."

The man in good clothes dropped his voice to an impressive undernote.

"Have them understand clearly that if they are asked why they come, they shall all make the same response: that in accordance with their constitutional rights, they are in Frankfort to petition the legislature – but above all have them well armed."

Saul scratched his chin with a new doubt. "Most mountain men hev guns, but some of 'em air mighty ancient. I misdoubts ef I kin arm all ther fellers I kin bring on."

"Then don't bring them." The man, issuing instructions, raspingly barked out his mandate. "Unarmed men aren't worth a damn to us. If anybody wants to hedge or back down, let him stay at home. After they get to Frankfort, it will be too late."

"And when they does git thar," inquired the man from Clay County incisively, "what then?"

"They will receive their instructions in due time – and don't bring any quitters," was the sharply snapped response.

Bev. Jett was the High Sheriff of Martin County, for in unaltered Appalachia, with its quaint survivals of Elizabethan speech, where jails are jail-houses and dolls are puppets, the sheriff is still the High Sheriff.

Now on a bleak January day, when snow-freighted clouds obscured the higher reaches of the hills, he was riding along sloppy ways, cut off from outer life by the steep barrier of Cedar Mountain.

Eventually he swung himself down from his saddle before Asa Gregory's door and tossed his bridle-rein over a picket of the fence, shouting, according to custom, his name and the assurance that he came upon a mission of friendliness.

Bev. Jett remembered that when last he had dismounted at this door there had been in his mind some apprehension as to the spirit of his reception. On that occasion he had been the bearer of an indictment which, in the prolix phrases of the law, made allegation that the householder had "with rifle or pistol or other deadly weapon loaded with powder and leaden bullet or other hard and combustible substance, wilfully, feloniously and against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Kentucky," accomplished a murder. Now his mission was more diplomatic, and Asa promptly threw open the door and invited him to "light down and enter in."

"Asa," said the officer, when he had paid his compliments to the wife and admired the baby, "Jedge Beard sent me over hyar ter hev speech with ye. Hit hes ter do with ther matter of yore askin' fer a pardon. Of course, though, hit's a right mincy business an' must be undertook in heedful fashion."

Judge Baird, whose name the Sheriff pronounced otherwise, had occupied the bench when Asa had been less advantageously seated in the prisoner's dock.

Reflecting now upon the devious methods and motives of mountain intrigue, Gregory's eyes grew somewhat flinty as he bluntly inquired, "How does ye mean hit's a mincy business?"

"Hit's like this. Jedge Beard figgers thet atter all this trouble in Frankfort, with you an' ther Carr boys both interested in ther same proposition, they mout be willin' ter drap yore prosecution of thar own will."

Asa Gregory broke into a low laugh and a bitter one.

"So thet's how ther land lays, air hit? He 'lows they'll feel friendly ter me, does he? Did ye ever see a rattlesnake thet could he gentled inter a pet?"

"Ye've got ther wrong slant on ther question, Asa," the sheriff hastened to explain. "The Jedge don't 'low thet ye ought ter depend on no sich an outcome – an' he hain't dodgin'. None-the-less while he's on ther bench he's obleeged ter seem impartial. His idee is ter try ter git ye thet pardon right now if so be hit's feasible – but he counsels thet if ye does git hit ye'd better jest fold hit up an' stick hit in yore pants pocket an' keep yore mouth tight. If ther Carrs draps ther prosecution, then ye won't hev ter show hit at all, an' they won't be affronted neither. Ef they does start doggin' ye afresh, ye kin jest flash hit when ye comes ter co'te, an' thet'd be ther end of ther matter. Don't thet strike ye as right sensible?"

"Thet suits me all right," acceded the indicted man slowly, "provided I've got a pardon ter flash."

Once more the sheriff's head nodded in reflective acquiescence.

"Thet's why ye'd better hasten like es if ye war goin' down ter Frankfort ter borry fire. They're liable ter throw our man out – an' then hit'll be too late." After a pause for impressiveness, the Sheriff continued,

"Hyar's a letter of introduction from ther Jedge ter ther Governor, an' another one from ther Commonwealth's attorney. They both commends ye ter his clemency."

"I'd heered tell thet Saul Fulton an' one or two other fellers aimed ter take a passel of men ter Frankfort, ter petition ther legislater," suggested Asa thoughtfully. "I'd done studied some erbout goin' along with 'em."

"Don't do hit," came the quick and positive reply. "Ef them fellers gits inter any manner of trouble down thar ther Governor couldn't hardly pardon ye without seemin' ter be rewardin' lawlessness. Go by yoreself – an' keep away from them others."

On the evening of the twenty-fifth of January Colonel Tom Wallifarro stepped from the Louisville train at Frankfort and turned his steps toward the stone-pillared front of the Capitol Hotel. Across the width of Main Street, behind its iron fence, loomed the ancient pile of the state house with its twilight frown of gray stone. The three-storied executive building lay close at its side. Over the place, he fancied, gloomed a heavy spirit of suspense. The hills that fringed the city were ragged in their wintriness, and ash-dark with the thickening dusk.

Bearing a somewhat heavy heart, the Colonel registered and went direct to his room. Like drift on a freshet, elements of irreconcilable difference were dashing pell-mell toward catastrophe. Colonel Wallifarro's mission here was a conference with several cool hands of both political creeds, actuated by an earnest effort to forestall any such overt act as might end in chaos.

But the spirit of foreboding lay onerously upon him, and he slept so fitfully that the first gray of dawn found him up and abroad. River mists still held the town, fog-wrapped and spectral of contour, and the Colonel strolled aimlessly toward the station. As he drew near, he heard the whistle of a locomotive beyond the tunnel, and knowing of no train due of arrival at that hour, he paused in his walk in time to see an engine thunder through the station without stopping. It carried neither freight cars nor coaches, but it was followed after a five-minute interval by a second locomotive, which panted and hissed to a grinding stop, with the solid curve of a long train strung out behind it – a special.

Vestibule doors began straightway to vomit a gushing, elbowing multitude of dark figures to the station platform, where the red and green lanterns still shone with feeble sickliness, catching the dull glint of rifles, and the high lights on faces that were fixed and sinister of expression.

The dark stream of figures flowed along with a grim monotony and an almost spectral silence across the street and into the state house grounds.

There was a steadiness in that detraining suggestive of a matter well rehearsed and completely understood, and as the light grew clearer on gaunt cheekbones and swinging guns an almost terrified voice exclaimed from somewhere, "The mountaineers have come!"