Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

Wolfe tried to get upon his feet then. A fiery streak of pain in his right leg wrung a hoarse cry of pain from him. He dragged himself to the shelter of a nearby overhanging ledge, and on the way came upon his bundle of food; it had been torn from his belt in the fall, and the friendly snow had hidden it from the robber's eyes. He sat up on the dry earth, and hurriedly took stock of his injuries. His forehead was bruised and swollen; six inches above his right ankle there was a fractured bone.

A small heap of driftwood lay nearby. Wolfe took a knife from his pocket, whittled a few handfuls of shavings from a stick of dry heart-pine, and started a fire to keep off the bitter cold. When the wood was burning well, he tied a handkerchief about his throbbing head, removed his right boot and ripped the trousersleg to the knee, and bound his injured limb in a set of crude splints. The pain of the fracture was now as much as he could bear without shrieking.

He stretched himself out on his left side, with his back to the rock wall. Suddenly he realized that he was staring at the smaller end of the wild vine. It had been smoothly cut; his man had been waiting for him in the top of the hemlock that had supported it.

"Of course, that was it!" nodded Wolfe, with a bitter little smile. "I--I might have known."

Perhaps the robber, thinking him done for, had gone away for good. Then he would put out the fire, that the smoke from it might not reveal the fact that he was still alive. Anyway, he must begin dragging himself homeward. If Tot became so uneasy that she followed him, and something happened to her--the thought made Little Buck Wolfe's face as hard as a mask of marble.

But his precaution was for nothing. A pair of opaque, uncanny black eyes watched him toss the burning wood to the snow. He chanced to look toward the hemlock above; he saw Cat-Eye Mayfield standing with one lean shoulder touching the body of the tree. Mayfield wore Wolfe's coat and hat over his own coat and hat; around his slender waist was Wolfe's cartridge-belt, and in his hands was Wolfe's repeater.

The two men glared at each other for a full minute without speaking. Mayfield was proud of his cunning; his villainous triumph was written over his narrow, dark face and in his lustreless eyes. Wolfe was defiant, and so full of rage that every nerve and fibre of him trembled; the veins in his temples stood out and throbbed violently.

"Well?" snapped Wolfe.

"Haw-haw-haw!" laughed Mayfield. "Howdy, and hello! A-judgin' from the way ye've got that 'ar leg o' yore'n fixed up, Little Buck, I'd say ye'd missed yore callin'. Ye'd ort to been a doctor, shorely! Ye could git plenty o' cases o' bots and pip, anyhow--haw-haw-haw!"

Wolfe set his teeth together, and refused to reply. Mayfield became demoniacally sober, and asked abruptly, "How'd ye like to be shot?"

There was certainly no levity anywhere in the question. Wolfe knew very well that he was facing the open jaws of death, knew that his life depended entirely on Mayfield's whim. Mayfield had little to fear. A man's bones might lie there in that wilderness, bleaching and bare, for years upon years before they were found. As for Tot--the man beside the hemlock figured that he could very easily take care of Tot!

"Have ye got any pa'tickler choice about jest whar ye'd ruther be shot?" he inquired with tantalizing calmness.

The man below forced himself to speak steadily: "There's no other way out? You're determined to top it all off with murder; eh?"

"Shorely." Mayfield's opaque eyes narrowed wickedly. "Shorely. I've lived my whole life to git to this one minute. Ef ye wants to say yore little 'Now I Lay Me,' git at it!"

Wolfe shuddered in spite of himself, though he bravely kept the other from seeing it. Death seemed inevitable. If he must go the long, long way, he would go as nearly without pain as he might; besides, he believed that a bold front would go farther than anything else toward saving him--and the wretch should not have the satisfaction of even suspecting that he was afraid.

"Harm Tot, if you dare--and if a man can rise from his grave I'll rise from mine," he said quietly. "Let's see whether you can hit my fingernail, Cat-Eye."

He put the tip of his right forefinger squarely on the center of his badly-bruised forehead. His hot mountaineer blood was thrumming in his ears now.

"Hold it thar!" said Mayfield.

Wolfe held it there. Mayfield drew back the rifle's hammer, and began to take aim without a rest; he was a good enough marksman for that. Wolfe watched Mayfield as though there was something about the villain that fascinated him. A minute passed, an eternity in sixty seconds, and then a spirit of terror seized the man below. The suspense bore down upon him with a weight that was smothering. He felt that he must cry out to Mayfield and implore him to put an end to it. But he kept his lips resolutely closed, and his gaze remained riveted unfalteringly upon the unwinking black eye beyond the sights of his own repeater.

"Huh!" Mayfield grunted suddenly.

There is no doubt that Wolfe's quite terrible gaze had something to do with it--Cat-Eye Mayfield lowered the rifle, and shrugged his narrow shoulders oddly.

"Huh!" he grunted again. "It wouldn't last nigh long enough to suit me, Little Buck."

The pain in Wolfe's injured limb was greater than ever in that moment, but he kept from wincing, for he knew that the other would certainly regard it as an exhibition of fright.

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

"Jest what I said; nothin' more, and nothin' less. I'm purty shore I can fix up somethin' 'at'll beat killin' ye this a-way. Yeuh, I'm purty dang shore I can."

"Probably," nodded Wolfe.

"Ye see," Mayfield went on devilishly, "I might hatch up some way to sep'rate you and Tot, or somethin' like that, ye know. Well, I reckon ye hain't never heerd what happened to yore pap and his outfit atter you and Tot left the basin, have ye? Ef ye hain't, I'll find big pleasure in a-bein' the one to tell ye. Hey?"

"What happened to them?"

"Well," and Mayfield caught the repeater into the hollow of an arm and began to chafe his cold hands, "well, Depity Cartwright he ketched yore pap on his knees clost to his moonshine still, which same he'd done tore all to pieces, a-prayin' to beat hell. Cartwright he took off his hat and waited untel Old Buck was through, when he chased Old Buck back to his cave whar he'd been a-hidin' at; and fin'ly Cartwright he ketched yore pap and took him down to the jail at Johnsville. How's that fo' news, Little Buck; hey?"

"It's news, all right," growled Wolfe. "Anything else?"

"Shorely!" grinned Mayfield. "Well, atter he had Old Buck all tight in jail, Cartwright--he's a reg'lar heller!--he watched the Wolfe wimmen; and when they went to their men folks over in the Balsam Cone section, he follered 'em. And 'en Cartwright he went back to Johnsville and got up a big posse, and went back and ketched every one o' the rest o' the clan. How's that fo' news?"

Wolfe had gone ashen. He believed, somehow, that Mayfield had told him the truth. And Mayfield really had.

"The whole outfit of 'em had a trial," the man beside the hemlock went on eagerly, "and they was all sent up to the State prison at Nashville fo' five year!"

That, also, was truth. Violently-suffering Little Buck Wolfe bent his head in gratitude for the silver lining to the cloud; five years was not half the sentence usually meted out for the crime of arson. A beautifully bright spot, too, was the turning of his iron father.

"I reckon you're a-wonderin' why I hain't never caused you to be ketched by the law, hain't ye?"

Mayfield's voice jarred. Wolfe shook his head.

"Not a bit, Cat-Eye. You're wanted, too, and you've no great wish to get anywhere near the authorities."

The man above eyed the man below peculiarly for a moment. Then the man above drawled, "Little Buck, you talk like a book. You look like a book. And you act like a book!"

Wolfe jumped as though he had been struck. His wife had told him that word for word one cold evening when they sat at their fireside; but she had said it admiringly, for she knew it was because he had, as it were, lived on a diet of books for eight years, so hungry had he been for education.

He knew that Cat-Eye Mayfield had eavesdropped at their cabin!

"I didn't tell anybody whar ye was at," said Mayfield. "Acause I had more ag'in ye 'an the law's got. Little Buck," and the lustreless eyes had never seemed so diabolical as now, "I've hated you all o' my life. I've hated ye so long and so much 'at I'm all hate; from the crown o' my head to the sole o' my feet, I'm all hate fo' you. Every dawg has his day, ye know. You've done had yore'n. Now I'm a-goin' to have mine. I'm a-goin' to make you wisht ye'd never been borned. I'm a-goin' to make ye wisht ye could die!"

Wolfe gave him a silent, unflinching stare. Mayfield continued.

"I hain't got it all planned out yit. But I think I can promise ye one thing faithf'ly; you hain't never a-goin to set yore two eyes on Tot Singleton any more."

"You cut-throat!" cried Wolfe.

"And," Mayfield grinned suddenly, "I plum' mighty nigh it fo'got to tell ye this here:

"Ye know a half a gallon o' licker and a half a gallon o' water makes a whole gallon o' licker, when a little tobacker or lye is put in it to stouten it up, don't ye? And it's considered a lowdown trick, as ye also know. Well, a long time ago, yore pap he sent me up to Alex Singleton's atter a gallon o' cawn-lightnin' when his still-worm had friz and bu'sted; and I swiped half o' the licker, and added water an a big leaf o' tobacker to make out. So when yore pap he found the tobacker in the jug, he went straight ater old Alex, which was the startin' o' the fightin' atwixt the Wolfes and Singletons. Some more news, hain't it? Haw--haw--haw! Well, I guess ye can make it to the lake in about three days o' good, hard crawlin' like a lizard. So long to ye, and bad luck!"

He disappeared. The sounds of his footsteps died away quickly, and there was silence save for the rippling of the creek and the soughing of the wind among the needles of the hemlocks.

Wolfe's heart was torn afresh with fears for Tot's safety. Mayfield possessed more cunning than he had been willing to believe; the plot, whatever it was, would be as black as the Pit and, probably, successful. Spurred to the highest degree of desperation, Wolfe stuffed his package of rations inside his shirt, and took a crude crutch from the pile of driftwood; then he began to make his way slowly and painfully down the stream. He soon came upon a rotting tree trunk lying across the creek, and by means of this he went to the other side of the canyon's bottom and to the base of a series of ledges that promised escape.

Twenty minutes later, he was crawling determinedly along the path that his feet and Mayfield's had made in the snow.

That journey through the frozen forest was difficult and terrible. He was forced to halt occasionally to rest himself, and always he built a little fire that he might not take cold while his overworked and trembling muscles were relaxed. He labored on all that night and all the next day, without stopping more than half an hour at a time. When there were yet five miles between him and the great spring that Tot had named "The Lake of Peace," he became utterly exhausted; the physical machine that was him was fine, but it had reached the limit of its endurance.

Since it was not humanly possible for him to go farther without rest and sleep, he made a fire in a sheltered spot and put on wood that would last for hours. This done, he fashioned himself a thin couch of laurel branches, collapsed upon it, and at once was wrapped in a slumber so deep that it was akin to death itself. But vague dreams tormented him when the first keen edge of his exhaustion was worn off; he heard Tot calling to him again and again, and he awoke in a fever of anxiety while it was yet night. He sat up stiffly. He had to go!

When he had eaten the last of the food that his wife had prepared for him, he took up his brushwood crutch and set out to the northward once more. He strove hard to make himself believe that Tot had been neither outwitted nor deceived by the foxlike and dastardly Mayfield. But the fear would not be driven away.

The middle of the afternoon had come when at last he reached the open space that lay around the head of Doe River. His heart ached with apprehension because Tot did not come out to meet him. He opened his lips to call and couldn't speak her name. Fear had made him dumb.

XXII

Wolfe crumpled on the icy doorstep. With the palm of one of his half frozen hands he beat against the door. The only answer he had was the dull rattle of the wooden latch. He struggled upward, seized the coonhide latch-string, and gave it a nervous jerk. The door creaked slowly inward. There was no person in the cabin. Wolfe entered on his hands and knees, reached a crude chair beside the hearth, and drew himself into it with difficulty.

A fire burned brightly in the wide stone fireplace, and in a corner of the room lay a little heap of wood with particles of snow still clinging to it; the cabin had not long been deserted, certainly. After he had rested for a few minutes, Wolfe went first to the door at the rear and then to the door at the front, and looked for his wife's footprints in the snow outside. He recognized only the footprints of Cat-Eye Mayfield and himself.

More anxious than ever, he leaned weakly against the jamb, put his cupped hands to his mouth, and shouted.

"Tot! Tot!"

The rockbound hills sent her name back to him in echoes that were worse than maddening.

"Tot!" he called again; and again came the echo, _Tot_!

Once more he called, and this time the voice that floated back to him was a little broken. He felt that he was about to fall. He crept dizzily to his chair, pushed it closer to the fire and climbed into it, and put out his hands and feet to warm them.

As the cold's numbness left him, his mind became clearer. He began to look about him. Tot's spare clothing lay nicely folded on a shelf beside his own, as usual. Tot's rifle was not in its place over the smoked log mantel. Every cent of their savings and the other money was gone. The bed was rumpled badly on one side. A few scattered bits of food and an unwashed frying-pan on the rough dining-table gave it a distinctly untidy appearance. These tokens offered Wolfe scant reason to hope that his wife was safe. All manner of fearful possibilities came to torture his already over-wrought brain. Perhaps----

His thoughts were broken into rudely by the sounds of masculine footsteps in the crusty snow beyond the doorstep. A rasping voice began to sing a snatch of foolish song:

"Sally she had a dream last night;
It was a pow'ful droll one.
She dremp' she had a petticoat
Made o' her mammy's old one!"

Wolfe switched his gaze toward the open doorway. Cat-Eye Mayfield entered and stamped the snow from his run-over cowhide boots noisily. In one hand he carried the rusty, old-fashioned, muzzle-loading shotgun that he had lost a few evenings before.

"And so ye got back, did ye?" he said hoarsely; he was suffering from a severe cold in his throat. "I told ye it wouldn't take more'n three days o' good, hard crawlin' like a lizard, didn't I?"

"Where's my wife?" Wolfe demanded.

Mayfield laughed gratingly. It was not forced. Wolfe's anxiety delighted him. He dropped into the other homemade chair and trained the shotgun across his lap, straight at Wolfe's face.

"Where's my wife?"

"Now you jest be keerful 'at ye don't start somethin' 'at ye cain't stop," Mayfield warned, at the same time thumbing back the old muzzle-loader's hammer. It was a clumsy thing. "I'll tell ye whar yore wife is at, Little Buck, in my own good time, and not a minute afore; please git that, will ye?

"I reckon," he went on forthwith, "you're a-wonderin' what I've done about the rifles and the money, hain't ye? Well, I broke Tot's rifle, and throwed it in the lake; I hid yore rifle whar I hid the money. This here old shotgun is all the weapon I want fo' you. I hain't a-wantin' to kill ye. It would end yore mis'ry too soon. I want ye to suffer a long time, and I'm a-goin' to make ye suffer a long time! The' hain't nary grain o' lead in this here old gun. The' hain't nothin' but powder--six loads o' powder, all tamped in tight wi' clay. You couldn't never guess what I'm a-goin' to do with it, so I'll tell ye.

"I'm a-goin' to shoot ye in the face wi' powder, and black it fo' good jest like a nigger's, and put yore eyes out--atter I've told ye what I've got to tell ye. Fust off, you're a-goin' to spend the rest o' yore days a-wanderin' in Doe River Wilderness as blind as a bat, a-eatin' leaves and grass and roots--keerful ther, Little Buck Wolfe, or I'll shoot right now!"

His voice rang with hatred and--insanity! But Wolfe was in no condition to take note of the latter. Wolfe was sitting up straight, his eyes glittering, his hands gripping the sides of his homemade chair as though they would crush the wooden splints. For a moment he seemed about to defy the threatening shotgun and attack its owner in spite of his badly injured leg.

But the wicked eagerness he saw in Mayfield's lean face caused him to relax. He did not doubt that Mayfield would pull the trigger at the slightest provocation. It would be best to wait. If he waited, there might be a chance----

"Tell me about Tot," he said unsteadily. "And if you've harmed her, Cat-Eye----"

"Now don't go so dang fast," broke in Mayfield, crossing his lanky legs without in the least spoiling the shotgun's aim. "I hain't even laid the weight o' my little finger on Tot. I shorely hain't. I managed my revenge another way. It was right cute, too! Well, here's the whole thing. Little Buck; and ef ye tries to git at me whilst I'm a-tellin' it, I'll shoot--and when I shoot, black goes yore face and out goes yore eyes. I hopes ye onderstand me.

"All right," he ran on, enjoying every moment of it. "When I got here, it was sev'ral hours atter night, and the moon it was a-shinin' as bright as day. The' was a light in the cabin window here--to show you the way home, I reckon. I hides myself ahind of a tree, and watches fo' a little while. Tot she'd come to the door every few minutes, and look out. Once she must ha' imagined she'd heerd you a-comin', acause she runs out in the woods a-callin' you.

"'Little Buck, whar are you at, honey?' she says. 'Do come on, honey; you must be half froze,' she says, jest the same as ef you was a kid! Bah!

"But the only answer she got was none. So she goes back in the house here, whar she sets down and cries, jest like wimmen will, ye know--now you be keerful thar, Little Buck. You can see, shorely, I'm mighty nigh it a-dyin' to shoot.

"Well," he continued, "I done already had everything planned out to a fare-you-well finish afore I got here. I took yore rifle down to the aidge o' the lake thar at the big beech, and laid it down half in the water and half out. I throwed yore hat out in the lake, and it floated jest like I'd figgered it would float. I doubles up yore coat, and puts it inside o' my shirt. I hides yore ca'tridge-belt in a clump o' laurel. Then I picks up a great, big rock from the lake's bank and holds it up above my head in both hands, and waits fo' a lull in the wind.

"When the wind it had lulled a little I throwed the big rock out in the lake. It made a pow'ful noisy splash jest like I'd wanted it to do. And 'en I commenced a-bellerin' as loud as I could beller and not bust a lung wide open.

"'Swim Little Buck swim! Kick wi' yore feet and paddle wi' yore hands! Swim! Swim!' I bellers. 'It's pow'ful deep and ef ye don't swim,' I bellers, 'you're shore to drownd!'

"And 'en I kicked in the water wi' one foot, and bellered a little more.

"Well, Tot she comes jest a-flyin' from the cabin here, which was edzactly what I'd looked fo' her to do. What makes some wimmen so dang foolish about one man when the world's full o' menfolks was allus more'n I could onderstand. And in the bright moonlight I could see 'at her face was as white or whiter'n the snow onder her feet. Her hands they was both stretched out in front o' her.

"'Little Buck,' she says, bad skeered, 'whar are you at, honey--whar are you at? says she.

"I goes to meet her, o' course. And I acted as ef I was shore turrible bad excited.

"'He fell in the lake!' I tells her. 'He slipped and fell in the lake! Le's git a rope, or a long pole, and mebbe we can git him out afore he's drownded!' Haw--haw--haw!

"I had--keerful, Little Buck; you cain't slip on me!--had already spotted a pole. I picks it up and runs back to the big beech, and holds it out over the water.

"'Ketch a-holt o' this here, Little Buck!' I squalls. 'Ketch a holt o' this here!' Then I stoops and looks out over the black lake. 'He's done went down,' I says to Tot, who was a-standin' aside o' me a-wringin' her hands. 'Pore boy; I cain't see nothin' but his hat a-floatin' out thar,' I says.

"'And you pushed him in, you brute!' says Tot, all a-sobbin'. 'Go in and try to git him out, Cat-Eye!' she says.

"'I didn't push him in,' says I; 'but I'll do all I can to git him out. It may gi' me my death o' cold,' I says, 'but I wouldn't mind anything fo' yore sake, little gyurl!'

"Keerful thar----

"And wi' that, I yanks off my old ragged coat and throws it and my old ragged hat to the snow, and dives right in head-foremos'. The water it wasn't so awful cold, it a-bein' nothin' but a monst'ous big spring--springs is allus cold in the summer and warm in winter, y' know--but it made me hoarse in my talk, as ye've done noticed, I reckon. I've been a-doctorin' my throat the best I could; but I'm still hoarse----"

"Never mind stretching it out like that!" Wolfe interrupted angrily. "Go on with it!"

Mayfield grinned a broad, evil grin. He was enjoying to the fullest his hour of triumph.

"Why," he leered, "you're danged anxious to have it over with and git yore face burnt black and yore eyes burnt out, hain't ye?

"All right; as I said, I dived into the lake and found 'at the water wasn't so cold atter all. I paddled and kicked ontel I'd worked my way deep down in the lake. Thar I took yore coat out from the inside o' my shirt, ketched it by the bottom, and let myself come back to the top o' the water. The minute my head pops up into the wind, it mighty nigh freezes off, o' course. How I spluttered and puffed and blowed! Tot was a-standin' on the bank onder the beech; she was a-leanin' out toward me.

"'Did ye find him?' she says, anxious-like. 'Did ye find Little Buck fo' me? Oh,' she says, 'don't ye dare to tell me you never found him, Cat-Eye!'

"I swims to Tot, and reaches yore coat up to her.

"'He'd lodged ag'in a rock ledge down thar,' I tells her, wi' my teeth a-chatterin' from the cold wind. 'I ketched him by the bottom o' the coat; but he slipped out of it, and rolled off o' the rock ledge, and sunk on down, hundreds o' feet in 'at black hole! He's gone, pore little gyurl,' I says. 'He's gone forever. What a pity it was he couldn't swim!' I says.

"And Tot she stands thar a-starin' at me wi' them 'ar big, fine, purty blue eyes o' her'n filled wi' the tarment o' hell itself. I'll own up 'at I did feel jest a bit mean over what I was a-doin'--you ta' keer, or I'll pull the trigger and put out yore blasted eyes! Don't you make nary 'nother move like as ef ye was a-goin' to jump at me, neither; do ye onderstand me?

"Well, I crawls a-drippin' out in that turrible cold wind, and says to Tot, 'As I'm jest about to freeze to death,' says I, 'I reckon I'd better run to the fire.'

"Git his hat fo' me,' begs Tot.

"I jumps in the lake and brings her yore hat. She wanted to know ef I'd done every blessed thing I could do to save ye, and I swore I shorely had. I went to the house, and stirred up the fire, and stood afore it, a-turnin' fust one side to it and 'en t'other. Tot she didn't foller me to the house. I watched her through a window. She stood out thar in the awful cold, wi' yore wet coat and hat pressed to her bosom, fo' two solid hours afore she moved a single inch.

"And I says to myself, I says, 'Mebbe I hain't a-gittin' even and square wi' you fo' a-turnin' me down and a-takin' that 'ar light-headed artickle you took fo' a husband! Mebbe I hain't a-gittin' even and square wi' you!' I says to myself. I----"

"You yellow-hearted scoundrel!" Wolfe exploded.

"Ta' keer! Ta' keer!" Mayfield cautioned. "You hain't in no p'sition to be a-callin' me ugly names. I never did like to be called ugly names, and I hain't a-goin' to put up with it."

Wolfe sank back in his chair. "All right," he said, "get the rest of it out of you."

"Well," the other pursued, "I knowed wimmen was scatter-brained and foolish when they was in love. I know the wimmenfolks and their ways, y' see. I'd figgered it out 'at Tot she would drownd herself to be wi' you in death. Wimmen's awful crazy when they're in love. And 'specially these here mountain wimmen. You know how they loves when they loves at all. So as I watched Tot through the window, I shorely expected to see her jump in the lake and go down. But she didn't. She fin'ly come to the house and set down afore the fire. Yore coat and hat was still in her arms, and they was froze stiff now--yore coat and hat was. Her face it was all pinched and blue wi' the cold.

"When she'd warmed up a little, she says to me, 'Tell me how it happened.'

"'It was this a-way,' says I. 'Little Buck he follered me over to a creek, and ketched me thar. He was a-bringin' me in, and we was a-walkin' along aside o' the lake, and his foot slipped on the ice. You know all o' the rest,' I says.

"'You pushed him in, you brute!' she says to me. 'You pushed him in, you brute!'

"'That's pow'ful foolish talk, little gyurl,' says I. 'You hain't got no right to 'cuse me o' sech a thing, atter I resked my life a-tryin' to git him out. It makes me feel plum' bad,' I says.

"But she stuck to it 'at I was the cause o' yore death, and all the argyfyin' I could do didn't change her notions a dang bit. And fin'ly I tells her this here:

"'Have it yore way, like wimmenfolks allus does,' I says. 'You can shoot me ef ye want to. I promise ye I won't raise a hand to keep ye from it,' I was jest a-bluffin', ye onderstand.

"'The only reason I hain't already shot ye,' Tot says, 'is 'at I'm afeard blood on my soul, even the blood of a rattlesnake like you, might keep me from a-goin' to Little Buck when I die. Even the blood of a snake is red,' says she.

"And I won't never fo'git how she looked when she told me that. Ef it hadn't ha' been fo' my hate fo' you, Little Buck Wolfe, I'd ha' quit right thar, shorely.

"Well, I laid down on the floor afore the fire, and soon drapped off to sleep. When I woke up, daylight was a-breakin'. Tot she was still a-settin' thar a-holdin' yore wet clo'es to her bosom. Her breath it was a-comin' wheezy and quick, and she had a scratchy sawt o' cough; her eyes they was as bright as coals o' fire, and her face was a-burnin' wi' fever.

"You contemptible devil!" cried Wolfe, every nerve in his body at taut as a violin string.

"Keerful now!" said Mayfield, his finger feeling for the trigger. "You hain't in any p'sition to be a-callin' me ugly names."

Wolfe quieted himself by a supreme effort. "Tell the rest," he urged.

It was all very plausible, just the thing, in fact, for Mayfield to do. Therefore, it did not occur to Wolfe that the wretch had lied to him--and the wretch hadn't.

"The' hain't a dang bit o' use in a-bein' so allfired fidgety," said Mayfield. "I'll git to the p'int in my own good time. I'm a-holdin' it off a purpose to see you wriggle. It's the biggest kind o' fun to me, to see you wriggle like a worm in hot ashes.

"All right. Well, as soon as it was broad daylight, Tot she gits up and goes out to the bank o' the lake whar she thought you'd went in at. I watched her through the window. I seed her stoop down clost to the water and pick up yore rifle, which I'd laid thar to fool her. She made shore it was yore'n, and took it to her bosom wi' yore coat and hat. Atter a little while o' standin' thar a-starin' down into the lake, she comes back to the house. She was a-staggerin' now; she was as wild as a rabbit in her head, jest plum' delirrus, and she commenced a-talkin' to you.

"'Little Buck,' she says, 'whar are you at, honey? I want you now,' she says. 'Why don't you answer me, Little Buck? Whar are you at? Why don't you come to me? Why don't you come to yore Tot?' she says; and she sobs a little at the last.

"And I knowed as I listened to her a-talkin' that a-way 'at my big vict'ry was at hand. Then I heerd her say, reel soft, this here:

"'I remember--I remember, now. How lonesome you must be down in that black hole without me!' she says--ta' keer thar, Little Buck Wolfe, ta' keer!

"Tot she goes to the table and puts down yore rifle, hat and coat. She takes a little Bible-book from the mantel, and puts it in her bosom. I watches her clost. She went out to the big beech aside o' the lake. I follered her, a-keepin' whar she wouldn't notice me. She turned her burnin' eyes uppards, and raised both arms. I seed the light o' the risin' sun sparkle on the di'mont o' the ring 'at was on her finger. Her copper-colored hair it looked like gold. I bit the inside o' my mouth ontel it bled, acause I was somehow afeard.

"'I'm a-comin' to ye, honey,' she says delirruslike. 'It's better to lay down thar in that etarnal night wi' you 'an to live on in this lonesome, lonesome world. Open yore arms fo' me, Little Buck,' says she, 'like ye used to--I'm a-comin' to be wi' you, my own!' she says.

"And she walked straight down in the water and went onder; and the last I seed o' her was one little, white hand----"

"One little, white hand--" Wolfe interrupted in a terrible voice. He could govern himself no longer--he straightened on his sound leg and sprang, his hands before his eyes to protect them from the powder. There was an oath from the lips of Mayfield, and immediately afterward came a great flash and a great roar. Wolfe found himself groping in a stifling white cloud of powder smoke--but he had not been burned in the least degree!

He dropped to his hands and knees and peered under the slowly-lifting cloud. He saw Cat-Eye Mayfield lying supine on the floor, with the old shotgun across his narrow chest. He crept forward, meaning to kill the unspeakable reptile with his bare hands--meaning to strangle the wicked life out.

When he reached Mayfield, he saw that the shotgun, which had been loaded beyond its power of resistance, had split for eight inches at the breech--and Mayfield's lean face was burned as black as that of an Ethiopian; his eyes were perfectly and incurably blind! The monster of his own foul brain's creation had turned upon him.

Wolfe uttered a cry that makes the finest description puny. He seized the other's slender throat in a viselike grip. The blind eyes stared toward him. Then he recalled the words of Tot.

"_Even the blood of a snake is red._"

His hands left Mayfield's neck. He rose and limped out of the cabin, and went to the big beech that stood beside Tot's beautiful Lake of Peace. There he saw many of his wife's small footprints in the snow----

Lying in the edge of the water, he found a dark blue shawl that she had been wont to wear about her shoulders when the weather was cold. Beside it lay a tortoise-shell comb. A branch that hung low over the lake had kept for him a few strands of hair that was of the color of dark copper. He wrung the water from the shawl and put it, with the other little treasures, on the snow beside him. Almost he wished, now, that he had killed Mayfield----

A sudden weird, skittering shriek split the air like a knife. He turned his head quickly. Through the mist of his sorrow he saw blind Cat-Eye Mayfield rushing toward the lake. Mayfield's thin lips were parted and jerking; his blackened face was contorted and hideous. No man may be himself when he has suffered as young Wolfe had suffered; Wolfe laughed thickly, oddly, mimicking the hoarse laugh that was Mayfield's.

"Haw-haw-haw!"

The sightless man fell to his hands and knees and began to grope for the edge of the lake. Soon he had found it. Then he straightened and turned his hideous face--a singular thing, and inexplicable--as squarely toward Little Buck Wolfe as though he had eyes to see him.

"I'm a-goin' to give up what the' is left o' me to make you suffer more!" Mayfield gibbered. "I'm a-goin' to lay down thar in 'at black hole wi' her--wi' Tot Singleton--I'm a-goin' to be buried in the same grave wi' her, yore wife, and he'p yeself ef ye can!"

Yes, the man was insane. Hatred had absorbed all his faculties.

Wolfe stood like a work in bronze, and stared. Mayfield ran into the water, cursing as he went, and sank like a stone, down, down, down to darkness eternal. Wolfe even went whiter as he watched the bubbles and lessening ripples that marked the spot where the worst man in the world had died that his devilish triumph might be a little greater.

His lips moved, and it was to say this, brokenly, "My cup--of bitterness--is brimming. Why, my God, why?"

He made his way back to the lonesome cabin. He threw the burst shotgun out to the snow, which hid it mercifully, and tossed Mayfield's slouch hat into the fire.

There was a little of sweet, sad comfort in handling the things that had been his wife's. When he could no longer bear to look upon them, he pushed a chair to the cabin's front doorway and sat down, unmindful of the cold, and absently watched the chilled sun sink behind the snowy forest.

A great silence was about him. There was not even a wind to sigh in the tops of the giant hemlocks. It was quite as though he were the sole inhabitant of some lost, dead world.

XXIII

When darkness had fallen, Wolfe closed the door and went to the low-burned fire.

He slept none that night, none the following day, and became pitifully thin and haggard. Loss of sleep and grief's steady gnawing had made him half-delirious. Hallucinations began to distress him. A dozen times he imagined he heard Tot's voice calling to him from the bluish-black depths of the lake. He imagined that he saw her ghost-white hand thrust above the water, and that it beckoned to him. Then came Mayfield's triumphant, taunting laugh, and he saw the lusterless blind eyes staring at him through a window----

"I must put an end to this," he told himself in a whisper, when night had come again. "I'll go to bed, and I'll go to sleep. Tomorrow I'll hunt for the money and my rifle. When I'm able to walk, I'll go to Conradsville, and from there on--on."

He went to bed and he went to sleep. When he woke the next morning, he felt stronger, though his grief was as poignant as it had ever been. He determined that he would bear his burden bravely; Tot would want him to do that, if she could know.

Seven hours he spent in a search for the money and his rifle, and found neither. Mayfield, he told himself, might have carried the money to the bottom of the lake with him.

Thirty very long days went by. Winter had passed, and the first breath of spring had come. Puccoons and pale-green ferns were beginning to peep from the rich black earth in sheltered spots. The buds of the hickories were swelling, and squirrels were rioting among them.

"Tomorrow I'll go," said Wolfe to himself. "I'll start early. With the help of a cane, I can walk pretty well."

It was during the last of the sunset hour. He sat in a chair just inside the front doorway, watching the dull-gold sun without seeing it as it burned a hole through the fringe of jackpines that grew along the crest of the western mountain. Then he bent his head to his breast and began to think. He knew that the hardest good-by of his life was at hand.

A little red ant that lived under the doorstep crawled up Wolfe's boot, up his leg, and to the back of his hand. Wolfe frowned, jerked up his head, brushed the insect away, and began to stare toward the sinking dull-gold sun again.

Thanks to the little red ant, he saw a flicker of officer-blue in the distance!

A fever of fear seized him. How relentless Whitney Fair was! Of course, Fair had sent this man after him--of course! He rose so abruptly that he overturned his chair, caught up a cane and a bundle that contained provisions, his spare clothing and the clothing that Tot, his wife, had left--he would never part with that, never--and rushed out by way of the back door. As rapidly as he could go he crossed the open space and entered the eastern half of Doe River Wilderness. At the edge of the thick forest, he paused long enough to fling out a hand toward the lake in farewell.

When he had reached the crest of a ridge half a mile from the lake, he looked back. The man in officer-blue was entering the cabin by the front doorway.

Wolfe hurried on breathlessly, going straight toward Virginia. He walked nearly all of that night, guiding his movements by the stars, and slept the next day hidden in a dense thicket of laurel and ivy. Not until he had placed forty rugged, hard-won miles between him and the head of Doe River, did he dare to travel in the daytime. His debt to the law must wait--until his debt to man was paid!

In an extremely wild section just across the Tennessee-Virginia State line, he ran upon a logging-camp that was sorely in need of a woods foreman. He decided that there was small chance of his being apprehended in this out-of-the-way place, so he asked for the job for one month and got it.

The pay was good, and in the four weeks he saved enough money to defray all expenses of the journey to the Northwest. Then he hastened to the nearest railway station, bought a fare, and caught a westbound train.

XXIV

The Wolfes had been in the State's prison at Nashville a little more than four years. They now stood convinced that they had erred, that they had wilfully violated a law that was absolutely just, and they were atoning like men. There was about them none of the grimness, none of the moroseness, none of the sullen bitterness that is usually found in the hillman when he has had iron bars and walls of stone placed between him and his liberty. If they pined for home and the great dim-blue mountains with their trees and rocks and sparkling streams, there was certainly no outward sign of it.

Only one of them had felt the cold touch of the white plague, the scourge that so frequently cuts short the life of the imprisoned mountaineer. This was Brian Wolfe's son, Charley, who was not much more than a boy for all of his six feet in height. But Charley didn't whine about it; to have whined about it, to him, would have been the part of a yellow dog. In point of fact, Charley Wolfe kept his afflictions so well hidden that no one else even suspected it.

It was pitiful how he did that. In the daytime he staved off the telltale cough by means of a force of will that was truly remarkable; at night he buried his head in the folds of his blankets and smothered the cough. He laughed lightly at his increasing thinness and at the hectic flush that glowed in his cheeks in the afternoons--when anybody chanced to mention it.

Christmas Day came snowy and cold, with a biting north wind. The spirit of peace and good-will had found its way through the high and forbidding stone walls of the penitentiary. The convicts were not kept in their cells, nor were they made to work, on this day. Even Bully McCrary, who had been an incorrigible and the fighting man of the prison before the coming of the Wolfes, cried "Merry Christmas!" to every person he met--which included his former sworn enemy, a sad-eyed, intelligent fellow nicknamed and named Pale Tom Ledworth.

Now it was customary for the Fiddling Governor, Tennessee's best loved man, to give the inmates of the State's prison a fine dinner on Christmas Day; and on this occasion, he had decided that he would drive out to say grace over it himself.

He arrived half an hour before noon-time. The warden met him at the office door, bowed almost reverently, for the Governor was a man whose faults were so magnificently human that they were almost virtues, and greeted him with the compliments of the season. He entered, drew off his overcoat and gloves, and sat down before the glowing stove.

Just then Old Buck Wolfe, an iron gray giant whom stripes seemed altogether unable to disgrace, appeared before the door of heavy iron-lattice that stood between the office and the prison proper. His range of vision did not take in the distinguished visitor.

"Warden," said he, "will you please see if you can't get a fiddle for me--just for this one afternoon, sir? I used to fiddle. I don't think I've forgot how. If it's not asking too much, that is."

The warden looked toward his caller.

"It's Christmas Day, Warden," the Governor said. "Get one if you can. I think I can understand how a fiddler feels when he hasn't touched a fiddle for several years. Who is it, Warden?"

"The chief of the Wolfes, sir."

At that the Governor rose, went to a desk, sat down beside it and reached for a telephone receiver. He asked for his residence, got the connection, and ordered that his own fiddle be sent at once to the penitentiary!

Old Buck Wolfe turned away the gladdest and proudest man in the sovereign State of Tennessee.

When he had gone, the Governor asked of the warden, "How are these mountaineers behaving now?"

"Men couldn't conduct themselves better than our mountaineers, sir," the warden answered. "They've done finely, all of them. The old man had a fight soon after his arrival here, but we couldn't blame him for it; he was very much in the right, sir. I'd be glad to tell you about that fight."

"I'd be glad to hear about it, Warden."

"The Wolfes," the prison official began, "had just finished putting on their first stripes when the supper gong rang. We marched them to a table that was all taken up on one side by Bully McCrary and his following. They had always made trouble among the other prisoners, the McCraryites had, and we kept them to themselves when it was convenient.

"Old Buck talked in mountaineer dialect then--Pale Tom Ledworth has since taught the Wolfes how to read and write and speak correctly, as well as a great many other things; oh, they've made the best of their prison term! Well, as I was saying--Old Buck looked across the table, straight at McCrary, drew his shaggy brows, and drawled this:

"'You fellers over thar bend yore heads down'ards a little. I am now a-goin' to ax the blessin'. The' hain't no use in a-bein' damned hawgs jest acause we happens to be here in the penitenchy.'

"McCrary and his outfit roared with laughter, and began to make sport of Old Buck Wolfe. Old Buck's eyes flashed like the fire of powder. He turned to his kinsmen and said, 'See 'at not more'n five o' them weasels over thar jumps on me at oncet.'

"Then he went straight across the table and its dishes, and collared McCrary; and before the guards could stop the fight, McCrary had received a mighty good pounding. I--I guess the guards were not in much of a hurry to interfere, to tell the truth about the matter; you see, sir, Bully McCrary was only getting what was coming to him.

"Old Wolfe went around to his place at the table, sat down, and eyed the McCrary crowd sharply.

"'You fellers over thar bend yore heads down'ards a little,' he repeated very quietly. 'I am now a-goin' to ax the blessin'. The' hain't no use in a-bein' damned hawgs jest acause we happens to be here in the penitenchy.'

"Every prisoner in the mess-hall bowed his head. So did the guards. And so, for that matter, did I. Since that time, Old Buck has said grace at every meal. He's held up his banner like a soldier, and most of the others have flocked to it. He was born to leadership, I'd say, born to rule. He's a king of his kind, sir."

Shortly afterward a messenger arrived with the fiddle and bow in a leathern case. The Governor took the case and put it on the desk at his side. The ringing of the gong announced that dinner was ready, and Warden Gray escorted the State's high light to the big mess-hall. They found the convicts seated at the long tables, which were well laden with the good things to eat one expects on Christmas Day.

Then the chief executive bared his head and raised one fine, white hand. In clear and impressive tones he repeated the old-fashioned blessing that he had heard so many thousands of times back in his boyhood home in Happy Valley.

Old Buck Wolfe echoed fervently the "Amen!" and added in the voice of a Goliath, "God bless the Governor!"

Pale Tom Ledworth rose and held up his glass of innocent wine in a hand that wasn't quite steady.

"The Governor," he cried, "God bless him!"

The other prisoners went to their feet and lifted their glasses high.

"The Governor," they cried, "God bless him!"

It rang and rang and rang.

Tennessee's best-loved man was suffering keenly at the heart. He was thinking of the lonesome and desolate homes of these men who were paying their debts to the law and to society, of the saddened firesides and empty chairs of this Christmas Day. He was thinking of the longing of women, and the prayers of women, and of the heavy crosses men make their mothers bear--their mothers, the finest fighters in the world.

"Warden," he whispered, his eyes bright and twinkling, "you'd better get me out of here."

"This way, sir."

The two of them went back to the office, sat down, and silently watched the whirling snow through the windows. When dinner was over, they went again to the mess-hall, and the Governor placed his fiddle and bow in the hands of Old Buck Wolfe.

"If you can play 'Buffalo Gals,'" he smiled, "play it. It comes very near to being my favorite jig."

"It's mine, my favorite," the big hillman exclaimed happily, "by a long shot!"

He handled the beloved instrument with reverence. It seemed that he feared his knotty, work-hardened hands would scar it. On his countenance was the light of a rapture that the owner of that fiddle, being himself a fiddler, understood. Old Wolfe began to play his favorite; his left foot kept time on the stone floor, and his huge body swayed rhythmically to and fro. Soon every other person present was tapping the floor with a restless foot. There is no gloomy note in "Buffalo Gals."

When the delighted mountaineer's wrists and fingers had become too weary to function properly, he lowered the instrument amid much applause. Then somebody lifted the cry, "One little tune from the Governor!" Others took it up, and it became a roar.

The Fiddling Governor took the fiddle and tightened two of its strings a trifle.

Because it was Christmas Day, the day of peace on earth and good will toward men.

"What shall it be, boys?" His eyes twinkled pleasurably.

Bully McCrary never made a greater mistake, though it came out all right in the end.

"Home, Sweet Home, if you please, sir," he begged.

The State's leading official rubbed his chin thoughtfully. Of course, he did not want to play that; there were those who would feel very much upset, if he did--why, it would be torture. But McCrary's gaze pleaded so hard; the melodramatic McCrary was ready to preach, pray, shout hallelujahs, sing, dance, or fight. The Governor put the fiddle into place and began, striving purposely to give a poor interpretation. But his fingers trembled in spite of him, rendering a delicate and soulful _vibrata_. The prisoners stared toward one another with wide, friendly eyes. Then, one by one, they began to stare toward the floor.

Only a few bars had been played when Charley Wolfe, who had tried manfully to be a credit to his name, who had so bravely hidden all signs of his affliction, crumpled to his knees and cried out in the musical hill dialect two unbidden words in one--"Goddle-mighty!"

Just that.

The Governor quickly passed his fiddle and bow into the hands of the warden, knelt beside Charley Wolfe, and swept back from the clammy brow the thick, dead-black hair. He lifted the lean face, saw a trace of red at each corner of the quivering, sensitive mouth, and knew. Charley Wolfe no longer had a secret.

"He's got the bugs, sure," very sympathetically said Bully McCrary, who also had seen. "He's got 'em, sure."

"Warden," the Governor asked, "how much is there left of this boy's sentence?"

"Let's see: with eight months counted off for good behavior--about three more months, sir."