Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

"My rheumatiz? I'd durn nigh' fo'got it." She picked up her pipe, and limped to him. "But I hain't no 'count, honey, at all. I'm skeered ontel I hain't got as much sense as a last year's bird nest. I was shore 'at ye'd been killed by them devilish fools. I dramp' it last night, too. I wisht I may never git another breath ef it don't jest look like the good Lord has fo'got ye, Little Buck, darlin'! But He ain't. He jest got ye in the pot to b'ile ye down to see what the' is to ye, honey. You stick; you show 'em. Yore pap hain't a-goin' to shoot at ye. Yes, I knows about it. So does the rest o' the Wolfes. They all says 'at he won't shoot at you. Why, he's dang nigh all to pieces!

"Or he was this mornin' early, anyhow," she ran on. "He found a cross cut in his bedroom floor, seven inches by five! And the' hadn't been nobody in the room but him and yore mother, neither; and yore mother she never done it. Now ye needn't to ax me nothin' about it, acause I shore don't know nothin' about it! But it makes me afeared to stay by myself at night, Little Buck; I can tell ye that. Well, what about the shootin'?"

He told her.

"I knowed it was the Singletons, acause most of it was done from the Lost Trail side," she chattered. "Well, Alex he'll hold 'em down fo' ye now. So you jest go right on ahead like ye've been a-goin', and ye're shore to win out, honey."

"I hope to," he said uncertainly, "but I don't see how. I need men, and I can't ask anybody to come in here and risk being sniped. I--I don't know what I'm going to do about it, grandmother."

She cocked her head to one side. "Would Nath he'p any?"

"Yes," quickly. "I'd like to have Nathan. I wonder if he'd dare to come over to me?"

"Little Buck, jest you ax him!" exclaimed the old woman, bringing her staff down on the little poplar with a clatter. "And say, honey, listen; don't call me 'grandmother'. Call me 'grammaw' like ye used to when ye was a weeny teeny boy. Hey?"

"All right, grammaw," without the quiver of an eyelash, "I'll ask Nathan the first chance----"

A man, tall, black-bearded, sad-faced, his mouth still showing signs of the bruise made by an iron-willed father's fist, stepped from the undergrowth and confronted Little Buck Wolfe squarely. There was a repeating rifle in his hand. There was a dimness in his eyes. It was Nathan himself. He shook hands silently with his brother.

The younger of the two men spoke first. "You've just come down from the Lost Trail, Nathan, I see; what were you doing up there with a rifle?"

"I wanted to he'p you out."

"I see," gratefully. "You didn't shoot?"

"I never got thar in time," said Nathan Wolfe. "When old Alex he comes a-runnin' up to you, I was jest a-fixin' to let Fightin' Lon have it atween the eyes; and ef I'd ha' pulled the trigger, they'd shorely ha' been another buryin' in the Lost Trail dirt. Little Buck, I heerd ye a-wonderin' to Granny thar ef I would dare to come over to ye. Yes, I would dare. I'm to ye, wi' pick or shovel, rifle or club, sink or swim, live or die, ef ye reelly do want me."

"I really do want you," his brother hastened to assure him. "Well, we'll go to work right now. While you finish cutting this piece out of the deadline tree, I'll go back and throw some ties and rails on the upper lumber flat. We'll try to get the track here by nightfall. The grading is all done this far, you see, and the rest of it is all level ground."

Nathan put his rifle down on the leaves. "Gi' me that 'ar ax," he grinned; and soon the woodland began to ring as his powerful arms drove the steel blade up to the eye at each blow in the soft yellow wood.

By the coming of darkness, the two perspiration-soaked men had finished the narrow-gauge road to the deadline. Then they sat themselves down before a crackling brushwood fire, and ate heartily a meal of their grandmother's cooking.

They slept beside the fire that night.

Granny Wolfe also furnished them with breakfast on the following morning. When they had eaten, they rose silently, each thinking the same thought, a thought concerned with the driving of a certain very important railroad spike. The shadow of the Big Blackfern was slowly falling from the crest of the Lost Trail and the base of bald Pickett's Dome. A few birds were singing their good-by songs to the lingering spirit of summer. A few sleek squirrels ran here and there in the trees or on the ground, choosing only the finest of nuts or none at all, now and then shaking their bushy tails saucily.

The old hillwoman was hopeful. She wore her red petticoat wrong side out; she had seen, the evening before, the new moon over her left shoulder and not through brush; she had dreamed of being at a wedding, too, a wedding that had taken place in a big white house that stood in the very center of a wide garden of flowers. All this, of course, could mean nothing but good luck!

"It was you and Tot!" she whispered to Little Buck. "And how her blue eyes was a-shinin'! Blast me ef I cain't see 'em yit, her eyes. Now I keep a-wonderin', honey, how Tot she's a-gittin' along in town? Is she a great, fine lady now, Little Buck? She shorely hain't got to be stuck-uppish, has she; hey?"

"Not a bit," smilingly. "She's getting along well, and learning fast; it's remarkable, they say. She's a fine lady, all right! But she's hardly 'stuck-uppish,' grammaw. No fine lady could possibly be stuck-uppish, you know."

"Well, I wisht--now hain't that the truth! Well, I'm a-botherin' of ye, honey. You and Nath wants to go to work. So go ahead. Yore pap he'll break his word, and 'en the goin'll be as smooth as ile. He--honey, ef here don't come pore old Grandpap Bill Singleton, the Prophet! How d'ye come on this fine mornin', Bill Singleton?"

The aged mountaineer's lips wore a smile, but there was worry in his eyes. He limped up to the trio.

"Ef ever I've seed a drier summer and fall," he began, "I don't know when it was. Why, what'm I a-talkin' about? I don't keer nothin' about the weather now; what I want to know now, Jane Wolfe, is what has become o' pore little Tot?"

Granny Wolfe straightened. "Hain't she at Johnsville, Bill?"

"She 'cided to come back wi' her pap yeste'day," said Grandpap Singleton, "and he hain't seed her--nor none of us has--sence he outrun her when he heerd the shootin'. Alex he's s'arched the woods all down thar below, and mighty nigh it everywhar else, and he never found no sign of her at all. Little Buck, please try to find her!"

"Perhaps she went back to the Masons--though it's not likely that she'd run from a fight that her own people were mixed up in," young Wolfe muttered. "We've a 'phone at the camp. Maybe I'd better go down there and 'phone the Masons."

The old mountain man's eyes flitted to the silent locomotive.

"Ef ye go on the ingyne, I'd like to go wi' ye," he said. "I hain't never--heh!--rid on no train nor nothin' like it."

"All right," nodded Wolfe. "Want to go with us, grammaw?"

"Shore," eagerly; "I hain't never rid on no train neither."

Wolfe helped the two old people to the cab seats, uncoupled the locomotive, sprang aboard and loosed the brakes. They were off for the now deserted camp.

The Masons hadn't seen Tot Singleton since the morning of the day before! Wolfe frowned hard at the tidings. After a few minutes spent in talking with the colonel, he hastened back to the locomotive, which was now trembling under a fair head of steam. He delivered his message to Grandpap Singleton, and reached for the throttle-lever.

"Honey," smiled Granny Wolfe, seeming somehow like a guilty child, "ef you won't git mad at me--I know whar Tot is! As we left the aidge o' the basin, I seed her a-peepin' down at us from the laurels on the Lost Trail side! I know I'd orter told ye, honey; but I hadn't never rid on no train afore, and I--I was jest mighty nigh it a-dyin' to ride!"

"That's all right, grammaw," said her grandson. "I wonder why she didn't go to her father's?"

Neither of his hearers could answer the question. He opened the throttle, and a sharp staccato of exhaust shattered the woodland peace.

When he stepped from the cab at a point near the upper end of the track, Nathan met him and said in a series of hoarse whispers, "The's dozens and dozens o' eyes on us right now, Little Buck. Gethered up thar on the Lost Trail is the Singletons, men, wimmen, childern, and dawgs; the Wolfes is the same way on the Blackfern side. I cain't locate pap, which ain't no good sign, Little Buck. I've been a-thinkin' purty hard, sence you left fo' the camp. Pap he's plum wild. He's a-goin' to shoot the man who drives the fust spike, and 'an he's a-goin' to shoot hisself--to keep his word is his religion, and it's his only way out. That's why he's hid out away from the rest of 'em. You don't think he'll do it, hey? None o' the rest of 'em does. But he will! Now, I've b'iled it all down to this here, Little Buck; listen clost----

"Ef you was to have pap and t'others o' the clan arrested and kep' in jail ontel ye could git through wi' buildin' the road and the mill, they'd burn the mill and the timber-woods as shore as shootin' when they got out. Then the law'd come out here wi' big posses, or mebbe the militia, and the'd be a awful fight, and deaths and deaths. So ye cain't do that. The one thing left is fo' me to drive the spike, and let pap shoot me and keep his word; that'd turn all o' our people over to you, acause they'd never stand fo' pap a-shootin' his own son. This way, they'd be jest pap and me killed; t'other way, they'd be dozens killed, and more dozens o' pore, daddyless little childerns left to suffer.

"So I'll drive that spike, Little Buck," he smiled. "I hain't a-goin' to let you do it. You're wo'th so much more'n what I am. You can carry on the business, and I couldn't. Asides, I've been a awful mean man in my day, and I want to do this here to sawt o' square things up wi' the Almighty. And so good-by, Little Buck, and good luck to ye as long as ye live!"

He caught up a hammer and a spike, and ran toward the section of loose rails his own hands had placed the proper distance apart just beyond the deadline.

His brother, shaken with emotion, started after him, to catch him and hold him back, to take the hammer and the spike from him and to drive the spike himself; but he tripped and fell, and before he found his feet again Nathan had placed the big iron nail and was raising the hammer to strike it.

"Wait, Nathan!" cried Little Buck Wolfe frantically. "Stop!"

Nathan did not wait. The hammer fell with a force that sent the big iron nail halfway to the heart of the oaken tie. Again the fine, muscular arms lifted the pointed hammer, and again did the hammer fall--then there came from the eastern jaw of Devil's Gate the roaring, murderous sound of a shot.

But Nathan paid no attention to it! He worked on determinedly. Before the echoes of the report had died completely away, two more spikes had been driven up to the head beyond the deadline. Little Buck Wolfe went to help, and soon the entire section of rails was made fast. A victory was won. For the first time in his life, Old Buck Wolfe had failed to keep his word.

The two brothers straightened then, and looked in all directions. A moment later, they saw Sheriff Alvin Starnes and a posse of men that represented the flower of the county's manhood, step into the Gate trail from the undergrowth; and they held as prisoners Old Buck Wolfe and nineteen other Wolfes, all of them disarmed and handcuffed!

The general manager of the Unaka Lumber Company went pale. He ran toward the sheriff's party.

"Sheriff Starnes," he protested hotly, "this is my own affair! You must let my people go. I never can do anything with them if you take them to jail, never! I promised my father that--at least, I told him--that I would not resort to law. He can't ever be made to believe that I didn't send for you; he thinks I've lied to him, don't you see? They didn't harm me, or my brother Nathan. The fact that you found them with rifles amounts to little; they're never without rifles. Please let them go!"

"One minute, Mr. Mason!" the illiterate, but brave Sheriff Starnes was somewhat angry. "We didn't arrest these men for nothin'. It was like this. One o' my deputies and me watched your father, while the rest o' the posse watched the other nineteen; your dad was some little distance away from the other nineteen, y'see. When the first spike your brother drove was goin' down, your dad lifted his rifle and said to hisself, and loud enough for me to hear, 'I'll git him in the edge o' the leg, anyhow, and keep my word.' I fired off my revolver as a signal for my men to cover the rest of 'em, and my pardner and me took charge o' your father.

"They've got to stay in jail, sir," he continued sharply, "until they can give a peace bond; and they cain't give a peace bond until they promise to not harm you or the business you're managin'. Maybe you don't know it yet, Mr. Mason, but Mr. Whitney Fair is buyin' out all o' the stock-holders in this thing but you and the colonel, which will give him a controllin' interest--and you know how he stands on sentiment!"

Whitney Fair! Alice's father. It was very bad news, indeed. Wolfe clenched his fists instinctively. Whitney Fair was a--a hog.

"We'll make no sech of a promise to nobody!" stormed the ashen-faced old clan chief.

The nineteen others repeated the declaration grimly, and some of them striped it with oaths.

"If I was to let 'em go," the sheriff went on, his voice now not so hard, "what then? You couldn't finish buildin' your operations, and you couldn't operate your operations even if you had 'em built. Jail's the only cure for this contrary twenty, sir. It'll take some o' the pepper out of 'em, and it won't do the everlastin' harm you think it will, either."

Thereupon Starnes and his posse half led, half dragged, their prisoners toward Johnsville.

Once more young Wolfe found himself in despair. What meddlesome person had brought the interference of the law? Whitney Fair? Who had told Fair about the crisis? Had it not been for that interference, the day would have been signally won for him. True, Nathan would have been shot in the leg.

But what was a fleshwound to such a victory! For his people would have discountenanced even that slight wounding of Nathan, who had so nobly laid himself on the altar of sacrifice, so much that they would have ceased to look to his father. His people would have come over as Nathan had come over. Thrown down, broken-spirited, his father himself might--possibly--have come over to the right way of thinking.

He didn't blame Starnes for taking the nineteen others also. Starnes could not have taken any one of the clan; he had to take the entire faction or none of it.

Weaver arrived from Johnsville. The moment Wolfe saw his foreman, he did something that was rather unusual for him; he jumped at a conclusion.

"What right had you to send the sheriff out here?" he thundered. "If you would take care of your own affairs, and leave mine to me, no doubt you would----"

The look of intense hurt he saw on the face of his friend stopped his speech abruptly. It was long before he forgot that look.

"They'll pay you what's due you at the office," he went on grimly, and Weaver went off down the track.

A slender figure in a blue dress sprang out of the laurels and confronted Wolfe. It was the missing Tot Singleton!

"He didn't do it!" she breathed. "I did it--I did it because I just c-c-couldn't bear the thought o' you being killed. I met Mr. Weaver going to town yesterday, and I made him tell me everything. Then I went for the sheriff and a posse--but I made the sheriff promise he wouldn't act unless it was to prevent bloodshed. Mr. Weaver took all o' the blame to save me. Call him b-back and ask him to excuse--to pardon you!"

Wolfe had been seeing her too often, and he had been too busy, to fully appreciate the vast improvement she had made in her language--even when he wasn't beside himself with anger. He gave her a queer, narrow smile now, then called Weaver back and apologized.

"And will you forgive me, Little Buck?" plaintively whispered Tot, when the foreman had turned away.

The bitter answer of Little Buck Wolfe, who in this black hour was mostly mountaineer, came promptly.

"I don't think I will," he said.

XIV

It was with a growing feeling of contempt for himself that Wolfe watched Tot Singleton go silently and broken-heartedly toward her old home in the south end of the basin. He knew that he had been grossly unkind to her, to say the least. She had done that which she had done only because of her deep interest in his own welfare. She had been his guardian angel, ever ready to make any sacrifice for him, and she had never asked anything of him but--forgiveness.

He grappled with the foolish primitive pride that had more than once come near to being his undoing, and put it down.

"Wait, Tot!" he said.

Instead of waiting, she began to run from him. She, too, had a certain amount of primitive pride.

And he frowned and let her go.

Not long afterward, Alex Singleton appeared with twenty-seven of his kinsmen, among whom was his son. He proffered the services of himself and the twenty-seven strapping hill princes in the work of finishing the railroad. Under the new circumstances, he believed Wolfe would feel free to accept. Wolfe did accept, with gratitude, and the little lumber track began once more to move onward.

When the mill-site was reached, the Singletons, with old Alex as foreman, went to one of the big coves and began to wage war upon the giant oaks and poplars. A better force of woodsmen never felled trees.

Wolfe hurried out the necessities for the building of the monster sawmill as fast as they could be shipped. Following the material, came carpenters, masons, and millwrights. The plant went up with a rapidity that was next to amazing. The first day of November saw all the machinery installed and belted, and a huge pile of perfect logs waiting to be converted into export stock worth above a hundred dollars a thousand feet. Since entering the basin, there had not been a single hitch anywhere.

And in October, that month of silences, dying leaves and soft, hazy skies, Wolfe did something besides watch over the building of the sawmill. On the spot where his father's rambling, rotting, leaky cabin had stood, an extra force of workmen had put up a very comfortable dwelling of six rooms; it was furnished throughout with modern furnishings, and lying on one of the cabinet mantels was a beautiful orange-and-brown violin. The whole was to be a surprise present for the elder Buck Wolfe. After some persuasion from the colonel and his good wife, Sheriff Starnes had agreed to bring the old clan leader out to see it.

The son was counting upon this surprise present to do much toward softening the hard iron of his father's heart. He had drawn his salary for fifteen months in advance, in order that he might build and furnish the house and buy the violin. It had put him to wearing cheap blue shirts and corduroys; he was saving his one presentable suit for special occasions.

The mill was to be started at noon. The Masons and Tot Singleton, Alice Fair--who was still dazzlingly pretty--and her father had come out to see it. Whitney Fair now owned a controlling interest in the company, which was no fault of Colonel Mason's, and he wasn't going to miss anything. Physically, Fair was a big fellow, corpulent and florid, with an unlikeable cleft in his chin and eyes that were a little too small for the rest of his features.

Promptly at twelve o'clock the great whistle blew and awoke ten thousand echoes from the walls of the basin; Progress the Brobdignagian was once more defying the spirits of the wilds. The sawyer threw a log to the carriage by means of a powerful steam apparatus; he thrust his main lever forward, and the foot-wide ribbon of steel dove into the wood with a scream like that of some victorious medieval warrior. The edgers and trimmers and slashers began to roar intermittently; it was like the quarreling of demons. Fine yellow poplar panel stock began to drift down the transfer chains and to where an inspector stood with a new rule in one hand and a new tally-book in the other.

The Masons and the Fairs shook Wolfe's grimy hands in congratulation. The humming of machinery and the sounds of the saws made speech impossible; but the man who had built the mill understood.

Then Wolfe missed Tot Singleton, and wondered where she had gone. Her absence was, somehow, a fly in this ointment. He left the Masons and the Fairs, and went down the outside stairway to the ground. The Singletons met him in a body. He found himself on old Alex's shoulders, while the rest of them cheered. When he was set on his feet, Granny Wolfe appeared with her staff and her dog; she put her arms proudly around his neck, drew his head down and kissed him on the forehead.

"Granmaw's so happy today, honey," she told him brokenly, "'at she could jest drap dead in her consarned old tracks. Kiss grammaw!"

He did, quite affectionately. Old Grandpap Bill Singleton then shook his hand as heartily as his poor strength would permit, and said to him, "Well done! You shorely ain't a slothful servant."

But the fly was still in this ointment of Wolfe's. Tot had stolen away to keep from meeting him. She was still angry with him, and the thought was oddly annoying!

His footsteps led him, it seemed without the aid of his will, up the creek and to the stately old willow that still towered over its bar of pure white sand. He came upon Tot standing motionless against the body of the gently whispering tree. She met his eager gaze with a pair of blue eyes that were half-curious and half-defiant.

It was Tot that spoke first. "I understood that the mill was to be set in the very center o' the basin. This tree is in the very center o' the basin. Why didn't you put your mill here, Mr. Wolfe?"

He stared at her. Then he took a sort of grip on himself.

"Because I didn't want to--er, desecrate this fine old spot," he told her. "Now please don't call me 'Mr. Wolfe' any more!"

"Oh, Mr. Wolfe," with the very queerest, chilliest little smile, "how many times did you figure out the amount o' lumber you could get from this tree before you mag-nan-i-mously decided to let it stand--Mr. Wolfe?"

He winced. A sharp reply sprang to his lips, but he kept himself from giving it voice.

"If you don't mind," he said, "I'd rather you wouldn't tease--now."

"Well," and her eyes scintillated peculiarly, "'Little Buck' sounds so much like an outlaw's name, or the name of an ox, you know."

She was strikingly handsome in that moment. A sudden feeling that he was her inferior kept him from being very much exasperated. He looked down at his ragged and greasy corduroys, at his grimy hands, at his worn old boots. He touched the short, stubby beard on his chin with finger and thumb. But he must offer his long-delayed apology.

"I wanted to ask pardon, Tot," said he, "for telling you a month ago that I didn't think I'd forgive you for sending the sheriff out here. I've seen you but twice since that day, and you avoided meeting me both times, or I'd have apologized sooner. Will you pardon me, Tot, and try to forget that I was such a brute?"

The mountain heart within her leaped wildly. What was an apology, the mere uttering of a few courteous words, compared to the nights and nights of poignant suffering his wounding her had brought? She had drawn deeply from self-pity for solace, without knowing that self-pity is one of the most poisonous weeds in the garden of life. She remembered more keenly than ever now. The wrong was magnified in her intensely human breast. And--she loved him.

Tot Singleton straightened proudly and proudly lifted her head. Deliberately she repeated the words that he had said to her when it was she that begged forgiveness.

"I don't think I will."

"Tot, you can't mean that!"

"But I do mean it," quite calmly.

"Then I'm mighty sorry, little girl."

He faced about slowly and left her, going toward his sawmill.

"I'm lowdown!" she whispered to herself when he had disappeared in the bush. "I made fun o' his name, and how could he help his people if he used any other name? Oh, I'm lowdown--He's such a fine man, and I--I have to watch myself, or I can't even talk proper!"

She turned her face to the body of the old willow that had been a witness to so much in her life, and sobbed because she hated herself for having taken her revenge.

XV

Thirty days in jail had not made the Wolfe clan into better men. Contrary to the expectations of Sheriff Starnes, not one whit of the pepper had been taken out of them. They were as grim, as silent, and as bitter on the thirtieth day of their imprisonment as they had been on the first. They had stolidly refused to help in the building of good roads for the county until a diet of plain bread and water forced them to it; and then they had worked slowly and sullenly, shirking at each and every opportunity. Not a man of them but watched by day and night for some avenue of escape. For escape, to the twenty mountaineers, was the one and only alternative of rotting in jail.

Several times Sheriff Starnes had called Old Buck to him and said in the kindliest possible fashion. "If you'll give me your word that you won't allow your son or the lumber business out there to be harmed, I'll sure raise a peace-bond for you and the others, and let you go home. Promise?"

The stubborn old hillman had not once stooped to give the officer a verbal answer to the question. He had not even shaken his shaggy head. He had said once that he would never make such a promise, and once was enough to say anything.

The jail gang had come in from work on the evening of the day that had seen the starting-up of the big sawmill out in Wolfe's Basin. Much to his surprise, Old Buck found himself alone and unguarded in the little room that served as a lavatory. He peered down the long, narrow corridor that led to the jail's main entrance. There was no person in sight. He had but to make a determined dash for liberty, and liberty would be his. The dusk was thick outside now.

But he didn't make the dash! It was not according to his code of honor to go free himself and leave the other men of his name behind bars. Where one Wolfe went, all the Wolfes must go; when one Wolfe suffered, all the Wolfes must suffer; it was part of the clan's religion. The big hillman threw away his opportunity to escape without the slightest regret.

He drew himself up almost ludicrously straight, walked to the main entrance, and shouted for Alvin Starnes. The sheriff and John Bird, the night jailer, appeared before him.

"What're you doin' out here?" Starnes asked puzzledly.

"Lookin' fo' somebody to lock me up, that's what," growled the mountaineer. With intense scorn, he went on, "You two is a purty pair o' rose-geraniums, hain't ye? Yau ain't fitten to gyard geese, let alone a real man-size man like me. Now smoke that in yore pipe, you tin-can sheriff! Put down yore guns, and I'll thrash ye both."

"I reckon not," smiled the sheriff.

"I reckon not," parroted the jailer.

"Cowards!" retorted Wolfe. "Well," impatiently, "are ye a-goin' to keep me a-standin' here all night? Ef ye hain't a-goin' to tangle up wi' me, stop a-standin' thar a-gawpin' at one another like a pair o' sick hound pups, and le' me into my res'dence!"

Shortly afterward a door of iron bars was closed and locked behind him.

Old Buck ate his supper greedily, wiped his bearded mouth with a blue bandana, and stretched himself out on his hard and narrow bed. Everything was quiet now, save for the ceaseless chirping of a cricket somewhere under the jail floor. The rays of the little electric in the corridor lighted the cell but dimly, and threw the shadows of the door's bars in weird, snaky, black lines against the outer stone wall. Old Buck looked slyly across to where his cellmates, his son Oliver and Cat-Eye Mayfield, sat on a pair of soap boxes. He glanced toward the door, rose and tiptoed over to them.

"I reckon we'll try it tonight, boys," he whispered. "Tonight'll do as well as any other time, I reckon. Ef it fails, it'll jest haf to fail. Better go to bed, both o' ye. But don' take off nothin' but yore boots. Watch me; and when ye see me give the signal, take yore place whar we've done agreed. Now rickollect, boys, the feller 'at makes the least bobble gits the thrashin' of his life from me!"

The two nodded and began to remove their footwear. The old clan chief went back to his bed, pulled off his boots and threw them noisily to the floor as was his wont, and hid his huge figure under the gray blankets.

All through the hour that followed, Old Buck watched the corridor covertly. Then he saw just what he expected to see and had been waiting for: John Bird brought a small table, a chair and a newspaper, and proceeded to make himself comfortable a few feet from the iron-latticed door.

Now this night jailer never failed to become drowsy at about the time when most people are going to bed, and nobody knew it better than the men he guarded. Soon he began to nod in spite of himself, and Old Buck Wolfe rose without a betraying sound; he took from his bed ten feet of strong wire, which he had cunningly smuggled into his cell a few days before, and very deftly made a slip-noose at one end of it. This done, he threw out a hand toward Mayfield and his son Oliver; they rose noiselessly, and stole to a point beside the iron door.

The high light of the scheme crept forward cautiously. He thrust the slip-noose out, dropped it over the shoulders of the nodding jailer, and with a violent backward surge, jerked him from his chair and pinned him hard against the door's bars. Oliver Wolfe quickly put an arm through and caught Bird around the neck; with the other hand he shut off the outcry Bird strove so desperately to make. Cat-Eye Mayfield snatched a big revolver and a ring of heavy keys from the jailers figure, and within another moment he had shot back the bolt that had held him a prisoner!

"Bring them 'ar three new wash towels from the washin' room, Cat-Eye," whispered Old Buck. "We're shorely a-goin' to do this here thing up right and tight whilst we're about it."

One of the new towels was knotted hard and fast over John Bird's mouth, making it impossible for him to call out; the other two were used to bind Bird's hands and feet. The three mountaineers then pulled on their boots, found their hats, put the night jailer into the cell they had so recently occupied and locked the door upon him, and hastened to liberate the rest of the Wolves.

"Now," grinned the leader, after they had gained the cover of the outside darkness, "now fo' the basin and a big kag o' yaller cawn-juice edzactly seventeer year old come next berry-pickin' time. I was a-savin' it, Cat-Eye, fo' my friends to drink at my fun'ral."

Twenty minutes later, they climbed aboard an eastbound C. C. & O. coal train, which had stopped at Johnsville to take on water for the locomotive. There would be no difficulty whatever in getting off at the sharp grade just beyond Wolfe's Creek.

John Bird did not succeed in ridding his mouth of the towel, though he struggled until he was faint. He resigned himself to the inevitable, and there was a deathlike silence in the jail--save for the ceaseless chirping of a cricket somewhere under the floor.

XVI

When the first afternoon's sawing was done, Little Buck Wolfe went to his adoring old grandmother's cabin for his supper. He had been taking his meals at the new house; but his mother was now entertaining the Masons and the Fairs, and she had her hands full without caring for him. Shortly after nightfall, he turned toward a small, rough building that stood not far from the mill. This little building had two rooms; one of them was furnished with a cheap bed and a cheap dresser, while the other contained a desk and a chair, a table, and an iron safe that now held four weeks' pay for the twenty-six carpenters, masons, and millwrights. Wolfe stopped at the door of his office and looked upward; except for a thick bank of clouds that lay low in the west, the sky was filled from horizon to zenith with very bright stars.

A moment later, he sank into his swivel chair, took a tally-sheet from his desk, and began to figure by the light of an oil lamp. The mill had, he found, cut two thousand dollars' worth of choice lumber in five hours! There were, he told himself, big gold mines that did not pay as this sawmill was going to pay.

Just then there came to his ears the hum of merry voices, which was followed by a sharp rap at the door. He called out an invitation to enter. The door swung stiffly inward, and the Masons, the Fairs, Granny Wolfe, Tot Singleton and her father and a spotted hound came trooping in. Fair and the colonel wore overcoats; the women wore wraps.

"You be the spokesman, Alex," said Colonel Mason, with a sly wink at the general manager.

Old Singleton tugged at his sunburned, black beard and laughed like a happy, healthy boy.

"How about a 'possum-hunt, Little Buck?" he asked.

"It's too dry, isn't it?" said Wolfe. "I'm afraid a dog couldn't pick up a trail at all, tonight."

"It hain't rained--durned ef I know when it was!" chattered Granny Wolfe. "Wisht I may die ef ever I seed another sech a dry summer and fall sence I was borned. Would ye gi' me a match, Little Buck, honey? This here contrary old pipe it's gone out ag'in."

"Why not have a cigar?" Whitney Fair suggested sportively, drawing a light-brown weed from a vest pocket.

"I be consarned ef I don't try it oncet, anyhow!" laughed the garrulous old woman. "I allus would try 'most anything oncet."

She applied a burning match to the cigar, and went to puffing with all her might, greatly to Whitney Fair's amusement.

"Yes," Alex Singleton agreed seriously, "it's too dry fo' a dawg to trail good. A feller just couldn't catfoot atter squirrels at all now! But these here folks they're all dead sot on a 'possum-hunt, and I've done j'ined my symp'thies wi' their'n. The's a lot o' pe'simmon-trees jest a-hangin' full down thar clost to whar yore little railroad meets the big railroad, and we might find a 'possum or two in them trees 'thout havin' to depend on the dawg to trail. And as the steam hain't went down in the ingyne yit, we wondered ef we couldn't have what Miss Alice thar calls a 'scursion as well as a 'possum-hunt. We could put some chairs on a lumber flat, ye know."

"Come along, like a good fellow," urged Fair, smiling a cold smile that temporarily effaced the cleft from his chin. "The safe will be all right, won't it?"

"I don't see why it shouldn't be," Wolfe answered. He threw off his weariness, and entered into the spirit of the thing. "I'll run up to the mill and get the locomotive and a flat," he continued, "and pick you up somewhere on the track below. While you're waiting for me, Alex, you might ask my mother for half a dozen chairs, and get about two lanterns ready, eh?"

Singleton nodded joyously. The seven callers and the dog then hastened into the cool, starry night.

Wolfe shaved himself and put on his one presentable suit of clothing, which required fifteen minutes. When this was done, he thrust a pair of buckskin gloves and a small flashlight into his pocket, and hurried toward the mill.

His brother Nathan, the watchman, challenged him faithfully. He instructed Nathan in case of trouble to call Weaver, who was now the mill's foreman, and who stayed at the big and rough boarding-house that had been erected for the accommodation of the "furriners" of the operating crew. Then Wolfe went to the geared locomotive, threw fresh coal into the furnace, and coupled to a lumber flat.

He met the others at a point close to the new dwelling that was to be given to his father, and took them aboard. Alex Singleton rode on the fireman's seat with his dog in his lap.

They stopped near the C. C. & O. siding. Granny Wolfe knocked the fire from her first cigar, and put the half-smoked weed in her pocket to save it. Alex Singleton took up one of the lighted lanterns, and set his feet in a narrow, laurel-lined trail that led off westward. Behind him in the order named went Granny Wolfe, the Masons, the Fairs, young Wolfe, and Tot Singleton.

Miss Alice Fair began to lag purposely, and soon there was a distance of some fifteen yards between her and her father, who carried the second lantern.

"That bank of clouds ahead looks like rain, Arnold," she said--plainly, to make conversation.

"Yes," agreed Wolfe; "and we need it."

"You've been avoiding me, Arnold."

He admitted it.

"Because you didn't want to be near me--which, of course, is a very simple conclusion!"

"Er, yes," he said.

"Why didn't you want to be near me?"

"Because we have nothing in common now, Alice," he told her. "It's--er, your own decree, and it's the best for both of us, I'm sure. I'm not the kind of fellow you'd care for with the only affection worth while. We'd be unhappy if we were married to each other. The time to part ways is now. Don't you agree with me, Alice?"

"I certainly do!" There was a tiny note of desperation in her voice; she had tried to make up, and failed. "I don't wonder at your forgetting me so easily," she went on. "You fell in love with me so easily, you know."

"Yes. I'm twenty-four. I felt the real need of the fine, understanding companionship of a good woman. You were the only young woman I knew intimately; I'd studied almost day and night trying to make up for a youth that had been entirely lost, so far as education was concerned, and I hadn't time to be a sociable fellow. I didn't stop to consider whether we'd be suited to each other--you were so pretty, you know, Alice."

"Thanks!" with stinging sarcasm. "But I'm fading now--am I?"

"I think you'll always be pretty," he said very seriously.

She looked backward and laughed at him scornfully. "But the impossible Miss Singleton----"

"She's not impossible," interrupted Wolfe, who was now somewhat incensed. "In fact, she's one of the finest specimens of humanity I've ever met."

Without another word, Miss Fair hurried on and overtook her father.

Suddenly a hand was placed lightly on Wolfe's arm from behind. He stopped and faced about, and confronted a slender, but well-rounded figure, a feminine figure in dark blue. It was Tot Singleton, and she was trembling violently.

"I overheard--I eavesdropped!" she whispered nervously. "I feel mean about it, Little Buck, and I wanted to tell you for my conscience's sake. To--to think that you, after the way I treated you this afternoon, would take up for me to Miss Alice! It hurts, and I'm ashamed o' myself. Please forgive me, if you can, will you?"

He took both her hands and pressed them warmly. The touch gave him a comfortable thrill. "Forget it!" he smiled.

"You're so nice to me," she cried softly. "But you're mistaken in what you told Miss Alice. I'm little, and mean. I'm just beginnin' to l'arn about myself. I'm a-findin' that half o' the fruit o' the tree o' knowledge is _tears_. Listen, will you--mountain dialect again! I wonder if I'll ever quit thinking in it? Understand me, Little Buck; I'm not exactly ashamed of the mountain dialect."

Wolfe laughed. "You can't go all the way at one leap, Tot, of course; be patient, and keep trying!"

"In some ways, I'm worse than I used to be," she said dejectedly. "I've got so afraid of the dark that it was easy enough for me to make myself believe that I kept close to you and Miss Alice because I didn't dare to stay far enough behind to be out of hearing. I wasn't afraid of the night when I lived back here in these hills. I wonder a lot about that, Little Buck. Maybe it was because I was a part of the night myself then!"

Wolfe looked at her with increased interest. She was beginning to show new facets. There was something quite wonderful about her.

"I'll be falling in love with you, Tot," he told her, "the very first thing you know."

"That's not likely," laughed Tot.

She hurried past him, and soon disappeared around a sharp bend in the narrow trail.

Wolfe walked on rapidly, and overtook the rest of the party just as the deep music of the dog's baying fell upon the chilly air.

The voice of Alex Singleton boomed out, "By the Eternal, ef he hain't treed a'ready! Treed by sight! Hold the 'possum, Rock! Hi, thar, Rock--don't ye lose him! Good old dawg, Rock!"

"I'll be durned ef this here hain't good luck," said Granny Wolfe. "Light out atter him, Alex!"

They followed their guide, who turned to his right and picked his way through a copse of laurel, and drew up at a persimmon tree laden with frost-bitten fruit. Singleton kept his lantern swaying behind him, while his alert gaze searched the branches of the tree for a pair of round and glistening black eyes. He wished he had a good pine torch!

"I see him!" he cried finally. "Le's hide the lights onder our hats, Mr. Fair, and everybody look right in the tiptop o' the tree."

They saw between them and the starry sky a round, dark bulk that was as motionless as the mountain under their feet. The old hillman passed his lantern to Colonel Mason, sat down, and removed his boots. A few minutes, and he had climbed to a point within ten feet of the persimmon-eater.

"Look out below thar!" he shouted.

He began to shake the uppermost branch with both hands. There was a sudden dull thump on the ground below. With a yelp of delight, the spotted dog dashed forward and seized the little animal by the throat. The opossum stiffened, and feigned death perfectly, but the hound was not one whit deceived. Alex Singleton climbed down, tied a stick in the 'possum's mouth to prevent its sharp teeth doing damage, pulled on his boots, rose and led the others proudly to another persimmon. For one night, old Alex was king.

The sport kept up until midnight, when Colonel Mason suggested that they return to the basin.

Just as those on the flat were settling themselves for the run, just as Wolfe was reaching for the throttle-lever, there came tearing through the stillness the dull but mighty roar of the sawmill whistle. It was somehow like a death-knell. It blanched the cheeks of every member of the party. The long blast died out in its own echoes. Then there came a short blast that ended abruptly; it was as though the hand that had held the whistle-cord had been suddenly stricken down.

Wolfe opened the throttle as far as he dared. With the other hand he opened the valve to the sandbox.

When they had covered three miles, a voice from the flat ahead sent tremors to Wolfe's heart. The voice said but one small word, but that one small word meant destruction.

"_Fire!_"

Fire, when the fine, new mill had run but half a day!

It was a cataclysm.

XVII

Soon the now thickly overcast heavens became lighted everywhere ahead by a lurid, blood-red glow. It was evident that the conflagration was great and steadily growing. Granny Wolfe knelt on the lumber flat, turned her seamed and troubled face toward the Omnipotent, and begged that a rain might come and put to rout the element that is at once mankind's best friend and worst enemy. The rest of the party kept grimly silent.

When the little locomotive pushed its one car through the jaws of Devil's Gate and into the basin, those on board were greeted by a spectacle that was nothing less than appalling. Every one of the deep and finely-timbered coves was a raging furnace of dead leaves, dead wood, and resinous pine, which were as dry as tinder. The big mill itself was a raging furnace. It was already too late for any rain except a cloudburst to save anything whatever. The devastation promised to be complete within a very short time.

"This is the end," Wolfe kept saying bitterly to himself. "This is the end of it all."

The locomotive and its flat came to a jarring, grinding halt a hundred yards from the burning mill, and the hunting party alighted. The "furriners" of the mill crew, most of the Singletons, and the women and children of the Wolfes were gathered together before the blazing plant in an awed, helpless mass of humanity. The children were crying with fear; some of the women were sobbing aloud; the men were pale and silent.

Weaver, the foreman, and Nathan Wolfe, the watchman, hurried to meet the party that had just arrived. The watchman was burned about the hands and face and arms; his clothing was scorched and blackened and torn.

"Well?" the general manager said unsteadily.

The foreman looked toward Nathan Wolfe, then turned his face away. Nathan Wolfe gulped, and tears began to sting in the broken blisters of his cheeks.

"Here's how it was, Little Buck," he said in a shaken drawl. "A fire was started up in every cove, it seemed to me, at about the same time. As soon as I seed it, I made a streak fo' the whistle-cord. Somebody slipped up and grabbed me from ahind o' me, and throwed me down hard. This man was half-drunk, but he was as strong as a bear all the same, and I jest couldn't git loose to save my life. Three other men carried bucket atter bucket o' mile-ile upstairs, and poured it out, and 'en set it afire. When the ile it was a-burnin' good, the big man he le' me go.

"I tried awful hard to put the fire out, Little Buck, but I jest couldn't do it. The water I throwed on the burnin' ile didn't do nothin' but spread the fire. Then I made fo' the whistle-cord ag'in, and this time I got to it. I'd done blowed one long blow, and was a-startin' to blow ag'in, when the same man 'at grabbed me afore grabbed me and throwed me out o' the ingyne-room door and kep' me out. Mr. Weaver and them 'ar other furriners they run in then, but they met about twenty men wi' clubs, and they couldn't do nothin'. And purty soon it was too late to even try to save anything. Was the mill inshored, Little Buck?"

"The insurance men were to be out tomorrow," Little Buck Wolfe answered hoarsely. "They'd refused the risk twice before. But you didn't tell me who set the mill and woods on fire, Nathan."

"I hates to tell ye, Little Buck," sadly, "but you're plum' shore to find it out anyhow. It was our own people. They must ha' broke jail. It was pap who grabbed me the twicet, and it was Unc' Brian Wolfe and our brother Oliver and Cat-Eye Mayfield who carried the ile upstairs and set the mill afire. The whole outfit of 'em was a-drinkin' hard."

Young Wolfe straightened under this, the greatest blow of his life, and folded his arms across his deep, broad chest. He stared toward the furnaces that lighted the whole of the basin as bright as noonday and roared as though they were Gehennas filled with lost souls; his hopes were all in those fires and burning, burning to gray ashes. Everything was gone. The Masons were left practically penniless in their old days; it was this, perhaps, that hurt him most--he could have wept over it. There had come to his whitened countenance a look that kept away even those of his friends and kinsmen who loved him best.

Suddenly there appeared from the bush to the eastward the Wolfe clan and Cat-Eye Mayfield. They reeled a little, and they were full of defiance. The Wolfes were now armed with rifles, which they had taken from their homes after their womenfolk and children had gone to the burning mill. They halted a few rods from the awed multitude. Their leader, staggering for the first time under alcoholic influence, shook his great fist toward the man who was losing most, and lifted his Goliath voice in tones of black triumph:

"Who wins now?"

The son did not even appear to be aware that the father had addressed him. There fell a silence that the noise of the nearby hungry flame was scarcely able to dissipate. Now no woman sobbed; no child wept.

"Who wins now?" the giant mountaineer repeated.

At last Little Buck Wolfe turned his head and looked toward his half-drunken father. A great deal of the suffering left his face, and a pity that was akin to the divine shone from his eyes. The old clan chief went pale in spite of himself. Came at that moment an old voice that seemed to hang in the air, like the smoke of incense----

"'_And they bring him unto the place Golgotha, which is, a-bein' interp'eted, The place o' a skull._' Saint Mark; fifteen, twenty-two."

Like a John the Baptist out of the wilderness, Grandpap Singleton, the Prophet, stepped before them. Until this moment, his people had not seen him since the time of the mill's starting. His mind was almost completely broken. His snow-white head was bare, and his lean face was strangely haggard. In one hand he carried a dark, round object that the others did not then recognize for the pitiful, tragic thing it was.

He went to a point close beside the young man whom his good old heart had loved so truly and so well. He stretched one of his long, thin arms toward Picketts Dome, which stood out plainly in the fire's light and in bold relief against the red, red heavens. The others looked, and saw on the summit of the peak a great ironwood cross. He had erected it there in the hope that his children and the children of his children might see it when temptation assailed them, and not forget.