The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 9

"Ter graze cattle, o' course," promptly surmised Persimmon Sneed.

"Jes' look at my fine chance o' yearlin's, a-layin' on fat an' bone an' muscle every day, with no expense nor attendance, an' safe an'

sound an' sure. An' now," he cried suddenly, and the shuddering jury saw the collocation of ideas as it bore down upon them, and Persimmon Sneed swiftly turned, facing them, while the mare nimbly essayed a _pa.s.sado_ backward, "ye air talkin' 'bout changin' all this, ruinationin' the vally o' my land ter me. Ye 'low ye want ter permote the interus' o' the public! Waal," raising an impressive forefinger, "ain't _I_ the public?"

No one ventured a reply.

The jury of view rode desperately on.

They had presently more cause for depression of spirit. It began to be evident that with the dusk some doubt had arisen in the minds of the mountaineers of the party as to the exact trend of the herder's trail.

The doubt intensified, until further progress proved definitively that the indistinct trail was completely lost. Darkness came on apace; the tangled ways of the forest seemed momently more tortuous; wolves were not rare in the vicinity; rumors of a gang of horse-thieves were rife.

After much discussion, the jury of view agreed that they would go no further at present, but wait for the rising of the moon, on the theory that it would then be practicable to make their way to the Hood cabin, on the other side of the mountain, which was their immediate goal, and which they had expected to reach by sunset; unaware that in their devious turnings they had retraced several miles of their course, and were now much nearer Selwyn's dwelling in the woods than the terminus of their route.

Despite their uncertainty and anxiety, the rest was grateful. The shades of night were cool and refres.h.i.+ng after the glare of the day, as they sat smoking on the rocks about the verge of the mountain. The horses had been unsaddled, and were picketed in an open glade at a little distance: in recurrent pauses in the talk, the sound of their grazing on the scanty gra.s.s came to the ear; all else was silence save the tinkling of a mountain rill,--a keen detached appoggiatura rising occasionally above the monody of its murmurous flow,--and the melancholy chiming of some lingering cicada, the latest spared of the frost.

The night was as yet very dark; the stars were dull in a haze, the valley was a vague blur; even the faces of the men could not be dimly distinguished. Strange, then, that an added visibility suddenly invested the woods and the sky-line beyond a dense belt of timber.

"'Pears ter me toler'ble early fur the moon," observed one of the men.

"She's on the wane now, too."

"'Tain't early, though," replied the sullen ba.s.s voice of Silas Boyd from the darkness; it was lowered, that the others might not hear.

"That thar old perverted Philistine of a Persimmon Sneed kep' us danderin' roun' hyar till mighty nigh eight o'clock, I'll bet, a-persistin' an' a-persistin' he knowed the road, when he war plumb lost time we got on that cowpath. An' the jury o' view, they hed ter take Persimmon Sneed's advice, he bein' the oldest, an' wait _hyar_ fur the risin' moon. Persimmon Sneed will repent he picked out this spot,--he'll repent it sure!"

This dictum was only the redundancy of discontent; but when, in the light of subsequent events, it was remembered, and special gifts of discernment were attributed to Silas Boyd, he did not disclaim them, for he felt that his words were surely inspired by some presentiment, so apt were they, and so swiftly did the fulfillment follow the prophecy.

There was a sudden stir among the group. The men were getting quickly to their feet, alert, tense, with broken whispers and bated breath.

For there, on a bare slope, viewed diagonally across the gorge and illumined with a wavering pallor, the witch-face glared down at them from the dense darkness of the woods. The quick chilly repulsion of the strangers as they gazed spellbound at the apparition was outmatched by the horror of those who had known the fantasy from childhood;--never thus had they beheld the gaunt old face! What strange unhallowed mystery was this, that it should smile and grimace and mock at them from out the shadowy night, with flickers of light as of laughter running athwart its grisly lineaments? What evil might it portend? They all stood aghast, watching this pallid emblazonment of the deep night.

"Boys," said old Dent Kirby tremulously, "thar's suthin' powerful cur'ous 'bout this 'speriunce. That thar light war never kindled in heaven or yearth."

"Let's go!" cried Jeremiah Sayres. "We hev got ter git out'n this somehows."

"Go whar?" croaked Silas Boyd, his deep ba.s.s voice lowered to a whisper. "I be 'feard ter quit the trail furder. 'Pinnock's Mis'ry' be hyar-abouts somewhar, a plumb quicksand, what a man got into an'

floundered an' sank, an' floundered agin, an' whenst they fund him his hair war white an' his mind deranged. Or else we-uns mought run off'n a bluff somewhar, an' git our necks bruk."

Now Persimmon Sneed was possessed of a most intrusive curiosity, and he was further endowed with a st.u.r.dy courage.

"I'll jes' step off a leetle way to'des that light, an' view whar it kems from," he observed coolly. "The woods air too wet to burn."

He would not listen to protest.

"The witch-face ain't never blighted me none," he rejoined stoutly as he set forth.

IX.

The thick tangled ma.s.s of the undergrowth presently intervened, so that, as he broke his way through it, he wondered that its bosky dimness should be so visible beneath the heavy shadows of the great trees looming high overhead. Once he stopped dubiously; the glow evidently came rather from below than above. It is too much to say that a thrill of fear tried the fibres of Persimmon Sneed's obdurate old heart. But he listened for a moment to hear, perchance, the sound of voices from the group he had left, or the champing of the picketed steeds. He was an active man, and had come fast and far since quitting his companions. Not even a vague murmur rose from the silent autumnal woods. The stillness was absolute. As he moved forward once more, the impact of his foot upon the rain-soaked leaves, the rustle of the boughs as he pressed among them, the rise and fall of his own breathing, somewhat quicker than its wont, served to render appreciable to Persimmon Sneed the fact that he possessed nerves which were more susceptible to a quaver of doubt than that redoubtable endowment called his hard head.

"Somebody hev jes' sot out fire in the woods,--though powerful wet,"

he muttered, his intellectual ent.i.ty seeking to quiet that inward flutter of his mere bodily being. "But I'm a-goin' on," he protested obstinately, "ef it be bodaciously kindled by the devil!"

And as he spoke, his heart failed, his limbs seemed sinking beneath him, his pulses beat tumultuously for a moment, and then were abruptly still; he had emerged from the woods in a great flickering glare which pervaded an open, rocky s.p.a.ce shelving to a precipice, and beheld a tall, glowing yellow flame rising unquenched from the illuminated surface of a bubbling mountain spring. His senses reeled; a myriad of tawny red and yellow flashes swayed before his dazzled eyes. He had heard all his life of the wild freaks of the witches in the woods. Had he chanced on their unhallowed pastimes in the solitudes of these untrodden mountain wildernesses? Was this miraculous fire, blazing from the depths of the clear water, necromancy, the work of the devil?

The next moment his heart gave a great throb. He found his voice in a wild halloo. Among the fluttering shadows of the trees he had caught sight of the figure of a man, and, a thousand times better, of a face that he knew. The man was approaching the fire, with a stare of blank amazement and fear as his distended eyes beheld the phenomenon of the blazing spring. Their expression changed instantly upon the sound. His face was all at once alert, grave, suspicious, a prosaic anxiety obliterating every trace of superst.i.tious terror. His right hand was laid upon his hip in close proximity to a pistol-pocket, and Persimmon Sneed remembered suddenly that his own pistol was in its holster on his saddle, he could not say how far distant in these wild, trackless woods, and that this man was a notorious offender against the law, sundry warrants for his arrest for horse-stealing having been issued at divers times and places. There had been much talk of an organized band who had a.s.sisted in these and similar exploits in secluded districts of the county, but Persimmon Sneed had given it scant credence until he beheld several armed men lagging in the rear, their amazed, uncouth faces, under their broad-brimmed hats, all weird and unnatural in the pervasive yellow glow. They had, evidently, been led to the spot by the strange flare in the heart of the woods; but Nick Peters could well enough pretermit his surprise and whatever spiritual terrors might a.s.sail him till a more convenient season for their indulgence. A more immediate danger menaced him than the bodily appearance of the devil, which he had momently expected as he gazed at the flaming water. He had seen the others of his own party approaching, and he walked quickly across the clear s.p.a.ce to Persimmon Sneed. He was a little, slim, wiry man, with light, sleek hair, pink cheeks, high cheek-bones, and a bony but blunt nose. He had a light eye, gray, shallow, but inscrutable, and there was something feline in his aspect and glance, at once smooth and caressing and of latent fierceness.

"Why, Mr. Persimmon Sneed," he exclaimed in a voice as bland as a summer's day, "how did you-uns an' yer frien's do sech ez that?" and he pointed at the flaring pyramid on the surface of the water.

Persimmon Sneed, in his proclivity to argument, forgot his lack of a pistol and his difficult position, unarmed and alone.

"I'll hev ye ter remember I hev no dealin's with the devil. I dunno how that water war set afire, nor my friends nuther," he said stiffly.

"Whar air they?"

Nick Peters's keen, discerning eye had been covertly scanning the flickering shadows and the fluctuating slants of yellow light about them. Now he boldly threw his glance over his shoulder.

Persimmon Sneed caught himself sharply.

"They ain't hyar-abouts," he said gruffly, on his guard once more.

A look of apprehension crossed the horse-thief's face. The denial was in the nature of an affirmation to his alert suspicion; for it is one of the woes of the wicked that, knowing no truth themselves, they cannot recognize it in others, even in a transient way, as a chance acquaintance. He must needs have heed. A number of men, doubtless, well armed, were in the immediate vicinity. As he whirled himself lightly half around on his spurred heel, his manner did not conform to his look.

"Did you-uns an' them kem all the way from the valley ter view the blazin' spring?" he asked. "Looks some like h.e.l.l-fire," he added incidentally, and with the tone of one familiar with the resemblance he descried.

"Naw; we-uns never hearn on it afore; I jes' run on it accidental,"

Sneed replied succinctly, hardly daring to trust himself to an unnecessary word; for the staring men that had gathered at a respectful distance about the blazing spring numbered nine or ten, and an ill-advised tongue might precipitate an immediate attack on the dismounted, unarmed group awaiting his return at the verge of the bluff. A genuine thrill of terror shook him as he realized that at any moment he might be followed by men as ill prepared as he to cope with the horse-thief's gang.

"I see ye rid," said Nick Peters, observing his acquaintance's spurs.

"Yer frien's rid, too, I s'pose?"

Persimmon Sneed, desirous of seeming unsuspicious, merely nodded. He seemed as suspicious, in fact, as watchful, as stanch, as ready to spring, as a leopard in a cage. His thin lips were set, his alert eyes keen, his unshaven, stubbly jaws rigid, his whole body at a high tension. The man of quicker perceptions was first to drop the transparent feint, but only to a.s.sume another.

"Now, Mr. Sneed," he said, with an air of reproach and upbraiding, "do ye mean ter tell me ez ye hev kem up hyar with the sheriff or dep'ty ter nose me out; me, who hev got no home,--folks burned my house ter the yearth, namin' _me_ 'horse-thief' an' sech,--nor frien's, nor means, nor havin's, plumb run ter groun' like a fox or sech?"

"Ef ye did"--said a gigantic ruffian who had come up, backed by a shadow twice his size, and stood a.s.sisting at the colloquy, looking over the shoulder of his wiry little chief. He left the sentence unfinished, a significant gesture toward the handle of the pistol in his belt rendering the omission of slight moment.

"Some o' them boys war wondering ef that fire out'n the water would burn," observed a fat, greasy, broad-faced lout, with a foolish, brutal grin. "It mought make out ter singe this stranger's hair an'

hide, ef we war ter gin him a duckin' thar."

"Air ye a-huntin' of me, too, Mr. Sneed,--ye that war 'quainted with me in the old times on Tomahawk Creek?" Peters reiterated his demand in a plaintive, melodramatic tone, which t.i.tillated his fancy, somehow, and, like virtue, was its own exceeding great reward; for both he and Persimmon Sneed knew right well that their acquaintance amounted only to a mere facial recognition when they had chanced to pa.s.s on the country road or the village street, years before.

Nevertheless, under the pressure of the inherent persuasiveness of the suggested retribution, Persimmon Sneed made haste to aver that his errand in the mountains was in no sense at the sheriff's instance. And so radical and indubitable were his protestations that Nick Peters was constrained to discard this fear, and demand, "What brung ye ter Witch-Face Mounting then, Mr. Sneed?"

"Waal, some fellows war app'inted by the county court ter view the road an' report on it," said Persimmon, "an' I kem along ter see how it mought affect my interust."

How far away, how long ago, how infinitely unimportant, seemed all those convolutions of trail and argument in which he had expended the finest flowers of his contradictory faculties, the stanch immobility of his obstinacy, his unswerving singleness of purpose in seeing only one side of a question, this afternoon, a few short hours since! The mutability of the affairs of the most immutable of human beings!

This reflection was cut short by observing the stare of blank amazement on Nick Peters's face. "Road!" he said. "Thar ain't no road."

"They air app'inted ter lay out an' report on openin' one," explained Persimmon Sneed.

Evidently Nick Peters's experience of the law was in its criminal rather than in its civil phases, but the surprise died out of his face, and he presently said, with a beguiling air of frankness, "Now, Mr. Sneed, ye see this happens right in my way of trade. Jes' tell me whar them loafers air, an' how many horses they hev got along, an'