The Tempering Part 18

Saul Fulton, the star witness in Asa's trial, had disappeared, and report had it that he had gone to South America--but the record of his former testimony remained fixed in the stenographer's notes and was fully available for later use--so that his going lifted no shadow from Asa's future.

"I reckon they squshed ther indictment ergin him," Boone commented bitterly to McCalloway, "an' paid him off with some of thet thar blood money."

He paused and then went on, holding his finger between the pages of the book he was studying. "He's done fared a long way off--but, some day he'll fare back again. I stands full pledged--twell I comes of age, an'

I aims ter keep my word. Atter thet, I hain't makin' no brash promises.

Ther hate in my heart, hit don't seem ter slacken none. I mistrusts. .h.i.t won't--never."

But if the festering grievance did not "slacken," at least it seemed just now partly submerged in the great adventure of going down to the world below and becoming a collegian.

He went early in the autumn when he was seventeen, and McCalloway, who accompanied and matriculated him, came away smiling. He had felt as though he were leading a wolf-cub into a kennel of blooded hounds. But when he had watched the self-poise with which his registrant bore himself and how quickly amused smiles faded away under his level gaze, he left with a rea.s.sured confidence.

When the days began to grow crisp the uncouth scholar saw for the first time the lads in leather and moleskin tackling and punting out on the campus--in the early try-outs of the season's football practice. He looked on at first with a somewhat satirical detachment, but when the scrimmages took on the guise of actual ferocity his interest altered from tepid disapproval for "sich foolery" to a realization that it was "no gal's play-party."

Several afternoons later Boone shyly intercepted the coach as he led out the practice squads.

"Does thet thar football business belong ter a club--er somethin'," he inquired, "er kin any feller git inter hit?"

The coach looked at the roughly dressed lad with the unruly hair, who talked in barbaric phrases--and his practised eye took in the sinewy strength of the well-muscled body. He appraised the power of the broad shoulders, and the slim, agile lines of waist and legs, and gave him a chance.

From the beginning it was evident that Boone Wellver would make the scrub team. He was a tornado from the instant the ball was snapped--"an injia rubber idjit on a spree," and yet this mystifying wolf-cub from the hills came back to the coach in less than a week with an almost sullen face and announced shortly:

"I hain't goin' ter play no more football, I aims ter quit hit."

"Quit it! Why?"

"I've been studyin' hit over," the retiring candidate explained gloomily. "A man thet hain't no blood kin ter me is payin' what hit costs ter send me hyar. I hain't hardly nothin' but a charity feller, nohow--an' until he says. .h.i.t's all right, I don't aim ter spend ther time he's payin' fer out hyar playin' fool games--albeit I likes. .h.i.t."

At the solemness and the unconscious self-righteousness of the tone, a laugh went up, and Boone turned with a straight-lined mouth to meet the derisive outburst.

"But I'm out here now, though," he added pointedly, lowering his head as does a bull about to charge, "an' I kin stay a leetle longer. If any of you fellers, or ther whole d.a.m.n pa.s.sel of ye, thinks I'm quittin'

because I'm timorous, I'd be right glad ter take ye on hyar an'

now--fist an' skull."

There was no acceptance of the invitation, and Boone, turning, with his shoulders straight, marched away.

But when McCalloway read his letter, he promptly responded:

"A razor is made to shave with--. Its purpose is work and only work.

Still, if it isn't honed and stropped it loses its edge. It's hardly fair to regard as wasted the time spent on keeping that edge keen. I want you to get the most out of college, and that doesn't mean only what you get out of the books. If I were you, I'd play football and play it hard."

Boone went down the stairs, four steps at a time. He could hear the coach's whistle out on the campus and he came like a hound to the chase.

"Hi, thar!" he yelled, "kin I git back in thet outfit? _He_ 'lows. .h.i.t's all right fer me ter play."

Back in the hills Victor McCalloway was more than a little lonely. He began to realize how deeply this boy--at first almost a waif--had stolen into the affections of his detached life. Once or twice he went to Lexington to see how his protege progressed, and he had several brief visits from General Prince and more than several from Larry Masters.

After what seemed a very long while indeed, Boone came home for his first summer vacation.

Araminta Gregory had a brother at her farm now, so the boy went direct to the house of Victor McCalloway, which was henceforth to be his home.

CHAPTER XVI

Happy Spradling, whose father had overseen the raising of Victor McCalloway's house, was only two years younger than Boone. When he had gone away, a lad of seventeen, he had been untroubled by thoughts of girls, and she had certainly wasted no meditation upon him.

But the Boone who came back was not quite the same boy who had gone away. He was still roughly dressed, judged by exacting standards, but corduroy had supplanted his old jeans, and he returned with a much developed figure and an improved bearing.

Now one afternoon Happy Spradling stood with a pail, by a "spring-branch" of crystal water, as Boone came by and halted. She, too, had been to one of those settlement schools that were just beginning to introduce new standards in the hills, and her homecoming to unrelieved crudities was not an unmixed pleasure. Certain it is that the slim girl in her calico gown was blessed with a fresh and vigorous beauty. Her sloe-brown eyes were heavy lashed, and her skin was blossom clear. Dark hair crowned her well-poised head in heavy ma.s.ses--and the boy was surprised because he had not remembered her as so lovely.

"Ye look right sensibly like a picture outen ther Bible of Rebekkah at the well," he banteringly announced, and the girl flushed.

"Ye ain't quite so uncurried of guise as ye used to be your own self, Boone," she generously acceded, and they both laughed.

They talked on for a while, and before Boone started away the girl invited shyly, with lids that drooped, "Come over sometime, Boone, an'

tell me all about the college."

But it happened that the next day he went, with a note from McCalloway, to the home of Larry Masters, the "mine boss," at the edge of Marlin Town, and there fate ambushed him in the person of the girl who had asked him to dance at the Christmas party.

Anne Masters came to the door in response to the boy's knock, and when he had seen her he stood hesitant with his eyes fixed upon her until her cheeks flushed, while he forgot the note he had brought for her father.

Anne herself did not recognize him at first, for Boone stood close to six feet now, and although he would always be, in a fas.h.i.+on, careless of dress, he would never again be the sloven, as were the kinsmen about him. His corduroy breeches, flannel s.h.i.+rt and boots that laced halfway up the calf, all seemed a part of himself, like a falcon's plumage. But what the girl noticed first, since she was both young and impressionable, was the crisp curl of his red brown hair and the direct fearlessness of his sky-blue eyes.

"I reckon ye don't remember me," he hazarded, by way of introduction; and she shook her head.

"Have I seen you before?" she inquired, and Boone found it difficult to talk to her because he was so busy looking at her. There had been girls as well as boys at the state university, but among them had been none like Anne Masters. Boone was to learn from a broader experience that there were few like her--anywhere. Even now when she was a bud not yet blossomed, she had that indescribable fairy G.o.d-mother's gift to which no a.n.a.lyst can fit a formula--the charm which lays its spell upon others and the gift of individuality.

"You've seed me--seen me, I mean--before. But it's right natcher'l fer ye to fergit it, because it was a long spell back. You gave me the first Christmas gift I ever got in my life--a piece of plum cake. Do you remember me now?"

The light of recollection broke over her face, illuminating it--and Anne Masters had those eyes that actually sparkle within--the dancing eyes that are much rarer than the phrase.

"Of course I remember you! I've thought about you--lots. I've always called you the 'fruit-cake boy.'" Suddenly her laugh rippled out in a lilting merriment. "Don't you remember when you challenged Morgan with the fencing foils?"

"Oh," exclaimed Boone, flus.h.i.+ng, "I'd plumb disremembered that."

It was June, with days of diamond weather and the bloom still upon wild rose and rhododendron. Anne looked away beyond the boy's head to the tallest crest of the many that ringed the town. Suddenly she demanded: "Have you ever been up there--at the tip-top of that mountain?"

He nodded his head, and she at once commanded: "I want you to show me the way up there--I want to go up and climb to the top of that tree that you can see from here, the one that stands up higher than all the others."

Boone shook his head soberly. "It's a right hazardous undertakin' fer anybody thet isn't used to scalin' clifts," he objected. "Why do you want to go up there to the top of old Slag-face?"

Her expression had clouded to autocratic displeasure at his failure of immediate a.s.sent, but only for an instant; then her eyes altered again from coercive frown to irresistible smile.

"Why?" she exclaimed. "Why does a bird want to fly? Up there at the top of that tree you'd be almost in the sky. You'd be looking down on everything but the clouds themselves. When I was a little girl--" she announced suddenly, "they had a hard time persuading me that I _couldn't_ fly. They had to keep watching me, because I'd climb up on things and try to fly down."

"Have you plumb outgrown that idee?" he inquired, somewhat drily.

"Because I'm not cravin' to help you fly offen that mountain top."