The Young Mountaineers Part 12

As the sheriff looked at Barney he hesitated. He balanced himself heavily on the wheel, instead of leaping quickly down as he might have done easily enough, for he was a spare man and light on his feet. Nick overheard him speak in a low voice to the constable, who stood just below.

"_That_ ain't the fellow, is it, Jim?"

"That's him, percisely," responded Jim Dow.

"He don't _look_ like it," said Stebbins, jumping down at last, but still speaking under his breath.

"Waal, thar ain't no countin' on boys by the _outside_ on 'em," returned the constable emphatically; he had an unruly son of his own.

The sheriff walked up to Barney.

"You're Barney Pratt, are you? Well, youngster, you'll come along with us."

There was silence for a moment. Barney stared at him in amaze. Not until he had caught sight of the constable, whom he knew in his official character, did he understand the full meaning of what had been said. He was under arrest!

As he realized it, everything began to whirl before him. The yellow suns.h.i.+ne, the gorgeously tinted woods, the blue sky, and the silvery mists hovering about the distant mountains, were all confusedly mingled in his failing vision.

He looked as if he were about to faint. But in a few minutes he had partially recovered himself.

"I dunno what this air done ter me fur," he said tremulously, glancing up at the officer whose hand was on his shoulder.

"Hain't ye been doin' nothin' mean lately?" demanded Jim Dow sternly.

Barney shook his head.

"Let's see ef this won't remind ye," said the constable, producing the bit of jeans and the b.u.t.ton.

As Nick watched Barney turning the piece of cloth in his hand and examining the b.u.t.ton, he felt a terrible pang of remorse. But he was none the less resolved to keep the freedom from danger which he had secured at the expense of his friend. To explain would be merely to exchange places with Barney, and he was silent.

"This hyar looks like a sc.r.a.p o' my coat," said Barney, utterly unaware of the significance of his words. As he fitted it into the jagged edges of the garment, the officers watched the proceeding closely. "'Pears like ter me ez it war jerked right out thar--yes--kase hyar air the missin' b.u.t.ton, too."

His air of unconsciousness puzzled the sheriff. "Do you know where you lost this sc.r.a.p?" he asked.

"Somewhars 'mongst the briers in the woods, I reckon," replied Barney.

"No; you tore it on a blackberry bush on the ledge of a bluff; it was close to the Conscripts' Hollow, where some burglars have hidden stolen plunder. I found the sc.r.a.p and the b.u.t.ton there myself."

Barney felt as if he were dreaming. How should his coat be torn on that ledge, where he had not been since the cloth was woven!

The next words almost stunned him.

"Ye see, sonny," said the constable, "we believes ye're the boy what holped to rob Blenkins's store by gittin' through a winder-pane an'

handin' out the stole truck ter the t'other burglars. Ye hev holped about that thar plunder somehows,--else this hyar thing air a liar!" and he shook the bit of cloth significantly.

"We'd better set out, Jim," said Stebbins, turning toward the wagon.

"We'll pa.s.s Blenkins's on the way, and we'll stop and see if this chap can slip through the window-pane. If he can't, it's a point in his favor, and if he can, it's a point against him. As we go, we can try to get him to tell who the other burglars are."

"Kem on, bubby; we can't stand hyar no longer, a-wastin' the time an'

a-burnin' of daylight," said the constable.

Barney seemed to have lost control of his rigid limbs, and he was half-dragged, half-lifted into the wagon by the two officers. The crowd began to fall back and disperse, and he could see the group of "home-folks" at the door. But he gave only one glance at the little log cabin, and then turned his head away. It was a poor home, but if it had been a palace, the pang he felt as he was torn from it could not have been sharper.

In that instant he saw granny as she stood in the doorway, her head shaking nervously and her stick whirling in her uncertain grasp. He knew that she was struggling to say something for his comfort, and he had a terrible moment of fear lest the wagon should begin to move and her feeble voice be lost in the clatter of the wheels. But presently her shrill tones rang out, "No harm kin kem, sonny, ter them ez hev done no harm. All that happens works tergether fur good, an' the will o' G.o.d."

Little breath as she had left, it had done good service to-day,--it had brought a drop of balm to the poor boy's heart. He did not look at her again, but he knew that she was still standing in the doorway among the cl.u.s.tering red leaves, whirling her stick, and shaking with the palsy, but determined to see the last of him.

And now the wagon was rolling off, and a piteous wail went up from the children, who understood nothing except that Barney was being carried away against his will. Little four-year-old Melissa--she always seemed a beauty to Barney, with her yellow hair, and her blue-checked cotton dress, and her dimpled white bare feet--ran after the wagon until the tears blinded her, and she fell in the road, and lay there in the dust, sobbing.

Then Barney found his voice. His father and mother would not return until to-morrow, and the thought of what might happen at home, with n.o.body there but the helpless old grandmother and the little children, made him forget his own troubles for the time.

"Take good keer o' the t'other chillen, Andy!" he shouted out to the next oldest boy, thus making him a deputy-guardian of the family, "an'

pick Melissy up out'n the dust, an' be sure ye keeps granny's cheer close enough ter the fire!"

Then he turned back again. He could still hear Melissa sobbing. He wondered why the two men in the wagon looked persistently in the opposite direction, and why they were both so silent.

The children stood in the road, watching the wagon as long as they could see it, but Nick had slunk away into the woods. He could not bear the sight of their grief. He walked on, hardly knowing where he went. He felt as if he were trying to get rid of himself. He appreciated fully now the consequences of what he had done. Barney, innocent Barney, would be thrust into jail.

He began to see that the most terrible phase of moral cowardice is its capacity to injure others, and he could not endure the thought of what he had brought upon his friend. Soon he was saying to himself that something was sure to happen to prevent them from putting Barney in prison,--he shouldn't be surprised if it were to happen before the wagon could reach the foot of the mountain.

In his despair, he had flung himself at length upon the rugged, stony ground at the base of a great crag. When this comforting thought of Barney's release came upon him, he took his hands from his face, and looked about him. From certain ledges of the cliff above, the road which led down the valley was visible at intervals for some distance. There he could watch the progress of the wagon, and see for a time longer what was happening to Barney.

There was a broad gulf between the wall of the mountain and the crag, which, from its detached position and its shape, was known far and wide as the "Old Man's Chimney."

It loomed up like a great stone column, a hundred feet above the wooded slope where Nick stood, and its height could only be ascended by dexterous climbing.

He went at it like a cat. Sometimes he helped himself up by sharp projections of the rock, sometimes by slipping his feet and hands into crevices, and sometimes he caught hold of a strong bush here and there, and gave himself a lift. When he was about forty feet from the base, he sat down on one of the ledges, and turning, looked anxiously along the red clay road which he could see winding among the trees down the mountain's side.

No wagon was there.

His eyes followed the road further and further toward the foot of the range, and then along the valley beyond. There, at least two miles distant, was a small moving black object, plainly defined upon the red clay of the road.

Barney was gone! There was no mistake about it. They had taken him away from Goliath Mountain! He was innocent, and Nick knew it, and Nick had made him seem guilty. There was no one near him now to speak a good word for him, not even his palsied old grandmother.

It all came back upon Nick with a rush. His eyes were blurred with rising tears. Unconsciously, in his grief, he made a movement forward, and suddenly clutched convulsively at the ledge.

He had lost his balance. There was a swift, fantastic whirl of vague objects before him, then a great light seemed flas.h.i.+ng through his very brain, and he knew that he was falling.

He knew nothing else for some time. He wondered where he was when he first opened his eyes and saw the great stone shaft towering high above, and the tops of the sun-gilded maples waving about him.

Then he remembered and understood. He had fallen from that narrow ledge, hardly ten feet above his head, and had been caught in his descent by the far broader one upon which he lay.

"It knocked the senses out'n me fur a while, I reckon," he said to himself. "But I hev toler'ble luck now, sure ez shootin', kase I mought hev drapped over this ledge, an' then I'd hev been gone fur sartain sure!"

His exultation was short-lived. What was this limp thing hanging to his shoulder? and what was this thrill of pain darting through it?

He looked at it in amazement. It was his strong right arm--broken--helpless.

And here he was, perched thirty feet above the earth, weakened by his long faint, sore and bruised and unnerved by his fall, and with only his left arm to aid him in making that perilous descent.