A Cumberland Vendetta Part 8

XIV

JUNE came. The wild rose swayed above its image along every little shadowed stream, and the scent of wild grapes was sweet in the air and as vagrant as a bluebird's note in autumn. The rhododendrons burst into beauty, making gray ridge and gray cliff blossom with purple, hedging streams with snowy cl.u.s.ters and s.h.i.+ning leaves, and lighting up dark coverts in the woods as with white stars. The leaves were full, woodthrushes sang, and bees droned like unseen running water in the woods.

With June came circuit court once more-and the soldiers. Faint music pierced the dreamy chant of the river one morning as Rome lay on a bowlder in the summer sun; and he watched the guns flas.h.i.+ng like another stream along the water, and then looked again to the Lewallen cabin.

Never, morning, noon, or night, when he came from the rhododendrons, or when they closed about him, did he fail to turn his eyes that way. Often he would see a bright speck moving about the dim lines of the cabin, and he would scarcely breathe while he watched it, so easily would it disappear. Always he had thought it was Martha, and now he knew it was, for the old miller had told him more of the girl, and had wrung his heart with pity. She had been ill a long while. The "furriners" had seized old Jasper's cabin and land. The girl was homeless, and she did not know it, for no one had the heart to tell her. She was living with the Braytons; and every day she went to the cabin, "moonin'n'

sorrowin' aroun'," as old Gabe said; and she was much changed.

Once more the miller came-for the last time, he said, firmly. Crump had trailed him, and had learned where Rome was. The search would begin next day-perhaps that very night-and Crump would guide the soldiers. Now he must go, and go quickly. The boy, too, sent word that unless Rome went, he would have something to tell. Old Gabe saw no significance in the message; but he had promised to deliver it, and he did. Rome wavered then; Steve and himself gone, no suspicion would fall on the lad. If he were caught, the boy might confess. With silence Rome gave a.s.sent, and the two parted in an apathy that was like heartlessness. Only old Gabe's shrunken breast heaved with something more than weariness of descent, and Rome stood watching him a long time before he turned back to the cave that had sheltered him from his enemies among beasts and men. In a moment he came out for the last time, and turned the opposite way.

Climbing about the spur, he made for the path that led down to the river. When he reached it he glanced at the sun, and stopped in indecision. Straight above him was a knoll, ma.s.sed with rhododendrons, the flas.h.i.+ng leaves of which made it like a great sea-wave in the slanting sun, while the blooms broke slowly down over it like foam.

Above this was a gray sepulchre of dead, standing trees, more gaunt and spectre-like than ever, with the rich life of summer about it. Higher still were a dark belt of stunted firs and the sandstone ledge, and above these-home. He was risking his liberty, his life. Any clump of bushes might bristle suddenly with Winchesters. If the soldiers sought for him at the cave they would at the same time guard the mountain paths; they would guard, too, the Stetson cabin. But no matter-the sun was still high, and he turned up the steep. The ledge pa.s.sed, he stopped with a curse at his lips and the pain of a knife-thrust at his heart.

A heap of blackened stones and ashes was before him. The wild mountain-gra.s.s was growing up about it. The bee-gums were overturned and rifled. The garden was a tangled ma.s.s of weeds. The graves in the little family burying-ground were unprotected, the fence was gone, and no boards marked the last two ragged mounds. Old Gabe had never told him.

He, too, like Martha, was homeless, and the old miller had been kind to him, as the girl's kinspeople had been to her.

For a long while he sat on the remnant of the burned and broken fence, and once more the old tide of bitterness rose within him and ebbed away.

There were none left to hate, to wreak vengeance on. It was hard to leave the ruins as they were; and yet he would rather leave weeds and ashes than, like Martha, have some day to know that his home was in the hands of a stranger. When he thought of the girl he grew calmer; his own sorrows gave way to the thought of hers; and half from habit he raised his face to look across the river. Two eagles swept from a dark ravine under the shelf of rock where he had fought young Jasper, and made for a sun-lighted peak on the other sh.o.r.e. From them his gaze fell to Wolf's Head and to the cabin beneath, and a name pa.s.sed his lips in a whisper.

Then he took the path to the river, and he found the canoe where old Gabe had hidden it. Before the young moon rose he pushed into the stream and drifted with the current. At the mouth of the creek that ran over old Gabe's water-wheel he turned the prow to the Lewallen sh.o.r.e.

"Not yit! Not yit!" he said.

XV

THAT night Rome pa.s.sed in the woods, with his rifle, in a bed of leaves. Before daybreak he had built a fire in a deep ravine to cook his breakfast, and had scattered the embers that the smoke should give no sign. The sun was high when he crept cautiously in sight of the Lewallen cabin. It was much like his own home on the other sh.o.r.e, except that the house, closed and desolate, was standing, and the bees were busy. At the corner of the kitchen a rusty axe was sticking in a half-cut piece of timber, and on the porch was a heap of kindling and fire wood-the last work old Jasper and his son had ever done. In the Lewallens' garden, also, two graves were fresh; and the spirit of neglect and ruin overhung the place.

All the morning he waited in the edge of the laurel, peering down the path, watching the clouds race with their shadows over the mountains, or pacing to and fro in his covert of leaves and flowers. He began to fear at last that she was not coming, that she was ill, and once he started down the mountain toward Steve Brayton's cabin. The swift descent brought him to his senses, and he stopped half-way, and climbed back again to his hiding-place. What he was doing, what he meant to do, he hardly knew. Mid-day pa.s.sed; the sun fell toward the mountains, and once more came the fierce impulse to see her, even though he must stalk into the Brayton cabin. Again, half-crazed, he started impetuously through the brush, and shrank back, and stood quiet. A little noise down the path had reached his ear. In a moment he could hear slow foot-falls, and the figure of the girl parted the pink-and-white laurel blossoms, which fell in a shower about her when she brushed through them. She pa.s.sed quite near him, walking slowly, and stopped for a moment to rest against a pillar of the porch. She was very pale; her face was traced deep with suffering, and she was, as old Gabe said, much changed. Then she went on toward the garden, stepping with an effort over the low fence, and leaned as if weak and tired against the apple-tree, the boughs of which shaded the two graves at her feet. For a few moments she stood there, listless, and Rome watched her with hungry eyes, at a loss what to do.

She moved presently, and walked quite around the graves without looking at them; then came back past him, and, seating herself in the porch, turned her face to the river. The sun lighted her hair, and in the sunken, upturned eyes Rome saw the s.h.i.+mmer of tears.

"Marthy!" He couldn't help it--the thick, low cry broke like a groan from his lips, and the girl was on her feet, facing him. She did not know the voice, nor the s.h.a.ggy, half-wild figure in the shade of the laurel; and she started back as if to run; but seeing that the man did not mean to harm her, she stopped, looking for a moment with wonder and even with quick pity at the hunted face with its white appeal. Then a sudden spasm caught her throat, and left her body rigid, her hands shut, and her eyes dry and hard--she knew him. A slow pallor drove the flush of surprise from her face, and her lips moved once, but there was not even a whisper from them. Rome raised one hand before his face, as though to ward off something. "Don't look at me that way, Marthy--my G.o.d, don't! I didn't kill him. I sw'ar it! I give him a chance fer his life. I know, I know--Steve says he didn't. Thar was only us two. Hit looks ag'in'

me; but I hain't killed one nur t'other. I let 'em both go. Y'u don't believe me?" He went swiftly toward her, his gun outstretched. "Hyeh, gal! I heerd ye swore ag' in' me out thar in the gyarden--'lowin' that you was goin' to hunt me down yerself if the soldiers didn't. Hyeh's yer chance!"

The girl shrank away from him, too startled to take the weapon; and he leaned it against her, and stood away, with his hands behind him.

"Kill me ef ye think I'm a-lyin' to ye," he said. "Y'u kin git even with me now. But I want to tell ye fust"--the girl had caught the muzzle of the gun convulsively, and was bending over it, her eyes burning, her face inscrutable--"hit was a fa'r fight betwixt us, 'n' I whooped him. He got his gun then, 'n' would 'a' killed me ag'in' his oath ef he hadn't been shot fust. Hit's so, too, 'bout the crosses. I made 'em; they're right thar on that gun; but whut could I do with mam a-standin' right thar with the gun 'n' Uncle Rufe a-tellin' 'bout my own dad layin' in his blood, 'n' Isom 'n' the boys lookin' on! But I went ag'in' my oath; I gave him his life when I had the right to take it. I could 'a' killed yer dad once, 'n' I had the right to kill him, too, fer killin' mine; but I let him go, 'n' I reckon I done that fer ye, too. 'Pears like I hain't done nothin' sence I seed ye over thar in the mill that day that wasn't done fer ye. Somehow ye put me dead ag'in' my own kin, 'n' tuk away all my hate ag'in' yourn. I couldn't fight fer thinkin' I was fightin' you, 'n' when I seed ye comm' through the bushes jes now, so white 'n' sickly-like, I couldn't hardly git breath, a-thinkin' I was the cause of all yer misery. That's all!" He stretched out his arms.

"Shoot, gal, ef ye don't believe me. I'd jes as lieve die, ef ye thinks I'm lyin' to ye, 'n' ef ye hates me fer whut I hain't done."

The gun had fallen to the earth. The girl, trembling at the knees, sank to her seat on the porch, and, folding her arms against the pillar, pressed her forehead against them, her face unseen. Rome stooped to pick up the weapon.

"I'm goin' 'way now," he went on, slowly, after a little pause, "but I couldn't leave hyeh without seem' you. I wanted ye to know the truth, 'n' I 'lowed y'u'd believe me ef I tol' ye myself. I've been a-waitin'

thar in the lorrel fer ye sence mornin'. Uncle Gabe tol' me ye come hyeh ever' day. He says I've got to go. I've been hopin' I mought come out o'

the bushes some day. But Uncle Gabe says ever'body's ag'in' me more' n ever, 'n' that the soldiers mean to ketch me. The gov'ner out thar in the settlements says as how he'll give five hundred dollars fer me, livin' or dead. He'll nuver git me livin'--I've swore that--'n' as I hev done nothin' sech as folks on both sides hev done who air walkin'

roun' free, I hain't goin' to give up. Hit's purty hard to leave these mount'ins. Reckon I'll nuver see 'em ag'in. Been livin' like a catamount over thar on the k.n.o.b. I could jes see you over hyeh, 'n' I reckon I hain't done much 'cept lay over thar on a rock 'n' watch ye movin'

round. Hit's mighty good to feel that ye believe me, 'n' I want ye to know that I been stayin' over thar fer nothin' on earth but jes to see you ag'in; 'n' I want ye to know that I was a-sorrowin' fer ye when y'u was sick, 'n' a-pinin' to see ye, 'n' a-hopin' some day y'u mought kinder git over yer hate fer me." He had been talking with low tenderness, half to himself, and with his face to the river, and he did not see the girl's tears falling to the porch. Her sorrow gave way in a great sob now, and he turned with sharp remorse, and stood quite near her.

"Don't cry, Marthy," he said. "G.o.d knows. .h.i.t's hard to think I've brought all this on ye when I'd give all these mount'ins to save ye from it. Whut d' ye say? Don't cry."

The girl was trying to speak at last, and Rome bent over to catch the words.

"I hain't cryin' fer myself," she said, faintly, and then she said no more; but the first smile that had pa.s.sed over Rome's face for many a day pa.s.sed then, and he put out one big hand, and let it rest on the heap of l.u.s.trous hair.

"Marthy, I hate to go 'way, leavin' ye hyeh with n.o.body to take keer o'

ye. You're all alone hyeh in the mount'ins; I'm all alone; 'n' I reckon I'll be all alone wharever I go, ef you stay hyeh. I got a boat down thar on the river, 'n' I'm goin' out West whar Uncle Rufe use to live. I know I hain't good fer nothin' much"--he spoke almost huskily; he could scarcely get the words to his lips--"but I want ye to go with me. Won't ye?"

The girl did not answer, but her sobbing ceased slowly, while Rome stroked her hair; and at last she lifted her face, and for a moment looked to the other sh.o.r.e. Then she rose. There is a strange pride in the Kentucky mountaineer.

"As you say, Rome, thar's n.o.body left but you, 'n' n.o.body but me; but they burned you out, we hain't even--yit." Her eyes were on Thunderstruck k.n.o.b, where the last sunlight used to touch the Stetson cabin.

"Hyeh, Rome!" He knew what she meant, and he kneeled at the pile of kindling-wood near the kitchen door. Then they stood back and waited.

The sun dipped below a gap in the mountains, the sky darkened, and the flames rose to the s.h.i.+ngled porch, and leaped into the gathering dusk.

On the outer edge of the quivering light, where it touched the blossomed laurel, the two stood till the blaze caught the eaves of the cabin; and then they turned their faces where, burning to ashes in the west, was another fire, whose light blended in the eyes of each with a light older and more lasting than its own--the light eternal.

THE END