Down the Ravine Part 6

They were still at it when Birt came home, but then Tennessee was tired of driving, and he let her go with him to the wood-pile and sit on a log while he swung the axe. No one took special notice of Rufe's movements in the interval before supper. He disappeared for a time, but when the circle gathered around the table he was in his place and by no means a non-combatant in the general onslaught on the corn-dodgers. Afterward he came out in the pa.s.sage and sat quietly among the others.

The freshened air was fragrant, and how the crickets were chirring in the gra.s.s! On every spear the dew was a-glimmer, for a l.u.s.trous moon shone from the sky. Somehow, despite the long roads of light that this splendid pioneer blazed out in the wilderness, it seemed only to reveal the loneliness of the forests, and to give new meaning to the solemnity of the shadows. The heart was astir with some responsive thrill that jarred vaguely, and was pain. Yet the night had its melancholy fascination, and they were all awake later than usual. When at last the doors were barred, and the house grew still, and even the vigilant Towse had ceased to bay and had lodged himself under the floor of the pa.s.sage, the moon still shone in isolated effulgence, for the faint stars faded before it.

The knowledge that in all the vast stretch of mountain fastnesses he was the only human creature that beheld it, as it majestically crossed the meridian, gave Andy Byers a forlorn feeling, while tramping along homeward. He had made the journey afoot, some eight miles down the valley, and was later far in returning than others who had heeded the summons of the sick woman. For she still lay in the same critical condition, and his mind was full of dismal forebodings as he toiled along the road on the mountain's brow. The dark woods were veined with s.h.i.+mmering silver. The mists, hovering here and there, showed now a blue and now an amber gleam as the moon's rays conjured them. On one side of the road an oak tree had been uptorn in a wind-storm; the roots, carrying a great ma.s.s of earth with them, were thrust high in the air, while the bole and leafless branches lay p.r.o.ne along the ground. This served as a break in the density of the forest, and the white moons.h.i.+ne possessed the vacant s.p.a.ce.

As he glanced in that direction his heart gave a great bound, then seemed suddenly to stand still. There, close to the verge of the road, as if she had stepped aside to let him pa.s.s, was the figure of an old woman--a small-sized woman, tremulous and bent. It looked like old Mrs. Price! As he paused amazed, with starting eyes and failing limbs, the wind fluttered her shawl and her ample sunbonnet.

This s.h.i.+elded her face and he could not see her features. Her head seemed to turn toward him. The next instant it nodded at him familiarly.

To the superst.i.tions mountaineer this suggested that the old woman had died since he had left her house, and here was her ghost already vagrant in the woods!

The foolish fellow did not wait to put this fancy to the test. With a piercing cry he sprang past, and fled like a frightened deer through the wilderness homeward.

In his own house he hardly felt more secure. He could not rest--he could not sleep. He stirred the embers with a trembling hand, and sat s.h.i.+vering over them. His wife, willing enough to believe in "harnts"* as appearing to other people, was disposed to repudiate them when they presumed to offer their dubious a.s.sociation to members of her own family circle.

* Ghosts.

"Dell-law!" she exclaimed scornfully. "I say harnt! Old Mrs.

Price, though spry ter the las', war so proud o' her age an' her ailments that she wouldn't hev n.o.body see her walk a step, or stand on her feet, fur nuthin'. Her darter-in-law tole me ez the only way ter find out how nimble she really be war ter box one o' her gran'chill'n, an' then she'd bounce out'n her cheer, an' jounce round the room after thar daddy or mammy, whichever hed boxed the chill'n. That fursaken couple always hed ter drag thar chill'n out in the woods, out'n earshot of the house, ter whip 'em, an' then threat 'em ef they dare let thar granny know they hed been struck.

But elsewise she hed ter be lifted from her bed ter her cheer by the h'a'th. She wouldn't hev HER sperit seen a-walkin' way up hyar a- top o' the mounting, like enny healthy harnt, fur nuthin' in this worl'. Whatever 'twar, 'twarn't HER. An' I reckon of the truth war knowed, 'twarn't nuthin' at all--forg, mebbe."

This stalwart reasoning served to steady his nerves a little. And when the moon went down and the day was slowly breaking, he took his way, with a vacillating intention and many a chilling doubt, along the winding road to the scene of his fright.

It was not yet time by a good hour or more to go to work, and nothing was stirring. A wan light was on the landscape when he came in sight of the great tree p.r.o.ne upon the ground. And there, close to the edge of the road, as if she had stepped aside to let him pa.s.s, was the figure of a little, bent old woman--nay, in the brightening dawn, a bush--a blackberry bush, clad in a blue-checked ap.r.o.n, a red plaid shawl, and with a neat sunbonnet nodding on its topmost spray.

His first emotion was intense relief. Then he stood staring at the bush in rising indignation. This sandy by-way of a road led only to his own house, and this image of a small and bent old woman had doubtless been devised, to terrify him, by some one who knew of his mission, and that he could not return except by this route.

Only for a moment did he feel uncertain as to the ghost-maker's ident.i.ty. There was something singularly familiar to him in the plaid of the shawl--even in the appearance of the bonnet, although it was now limp and damp. He saw it at "meet'n" whenever the circuit rider preached, and he presently recognized it. This was Mrs. Dicey's bonnet!

His face hardened. He set his teeth together. An angry flush flared to the roots of his hair.

Not that he suspected the widow of having set this trap to frighten him. He was not learned, nor versed in feminine idiosyncrasies, but it does not require much wisdom to know that on no account whatever does a woman's best bonnet stay out all night in the dew, intentionally. The presence of her bonnet proved the widow's alibi.

Like a flash he remembered Birt's anger the previous day. "Told me he'd make me divide work mo' ekal, an' ez good ez said he'd knock me down ef he could. An' I told him I'd hold the grudge agin him jes'

the same--an' I will!"

He felt sure that it was Birt who had thus taken revenge, because he was kept at work while his fellow-laborer was free to go.

Byers thought the boy would presently come to take the garments home, and conceal his share in the matter, before any one else would be likely to stir abroad.

"An' I'll hide close by with a good big hickory stick, an' I'll gin him a larrupin' ez he won't furgit in a month o' Sundays," he resolved, angrily.

He opened his clasp-knife, and walked slowly into the woods, looking about for a choice hickory sprout. He did not at once find one of a size that he considered appropriate to the magnitude of Birt's wickedness, and he went further perhaps than he realized, and stayed longer.

He had a smile of stern satisfaction on his face when he was lopping off the leaves and twigs of a specimen admirably adapted for vengeance. He was stealthy in returning, keeping behind the trees, and slipping softly from bole to bole. At last, as the winding road was once more in view, he crouched down behind the roots of the great fallen oak.

"I don't want him ter git a glimge of me, an' skeer him off afore I kin lay a-holt on him," he said.

He intended to keep the neighboring bush under close watch, and through the interlacing roots he peered out furtively at it. His eyes distended and he hastily rose from his hiding-place.

The blackberry bush was swaying in the wind, clothed only in its own scant and rusty leaves. A wren perched on a spray, chirped cheerful matins.

CHAPTER VI.

His scheme was thwarted. The boy had come and gone in his absence, all unaware of his proximity and the impending punishment so narrowly escaped.

But when Andy Byers reached the tanyard and went to work, he said nothing to Birt. He did not even allude to the counterfeit apparition in the woods, although Mrs. Price's probable recovery was more than once under discussion among the men who came and went,-- indeed, she lived many years thereafter, to defend her lucky grandchildren against every device of discipline. Byers had given heed to more crafty counsels. On the whole he was now glad that he had not had the opportunity to make Birt and the hickory sprout acquainted with each other. This would be an acknowledgment that he had been terrified by the manufactured ghost, and he preferred foregoing open revenge to encountering the jocose tanner's ridicule, and the gibes that would circulate at his expense throughout the country-side. But he cherished the grievance, and he resolved that Birt should rue it. He had expected that Birt would boast of having frightened him. He intended to admit that he had been a trifle startled, and in treating the matter thus lightly he hoped it would seem that the apparition was a failure.

However, day by day pa.s.sed and nothing was said. The ghost vanished as mysteriously as it had come. Only Mrs. Dicey, taking her bonnet and ap.r.o.n and shawl from the chest, was amazed at the extraordinary manner in which they were folded and at their limp condition, and when she found a bunch of c.o.c.kle-burs in the worsted fringes of the shawl she declared that witches must have had it, for she had not worn it since early in April when there were no c.o.c.kle-burs. She forthwith nailed a horseshoe on the door to keep the witches out, and she never liked the shawl so well after she had projected a mental picture of a lady wearing it, riding on a broomstick, and sporting also a long peaked nose.

Birt hardly noticed the crusty and ungracious conduct of Andy Byers toward him. He worked on doggedly, scheming all the time to get off from the tanyard, and wondering again and again why Nate had gone, and where, and when he would return.

One day--a gray day it was and threatening rain--as he came suddenly out of the shed, he saw a boy at the bars. It was Nate Griggs! No; only for a moment he thought this was Nate. But this fellow's eyes were not so close together; his hair was less sandy; there were no facial indications of extreme slyness. It was only Nathan's humble likeness, his younger brother, Timothy.

He had Nate's coat thrown over his arm, and he shouldered his brother's rifle.

Tim came slouching slowly into the tanyard, a good-natured grin on his face. He paused only to knock Rufe's hat over his eyes, as the small boy stood in front of the low-spirited mule, both hands busy with the animal's mouth, striving to open his jaws to judge by his teeth how old he might be.

"The critter'll bite ye, Rufe!" Birt exclaimed, for as Rufe stooped to pick up his hat the mule showed some curiosity in his turn, and was snuffling at Rufe's hay-colored hair.

Rufe readjusted his head-gear, and ceasing his impolite researches into the mule's age, came up to the other two boys. Tim had paused by the shed, and leaning upon the rifle, began to talk.

"I war a-pa.s.sin' by, an' I thought I'd drap in on ye."

"Hev you-uns hearn from Nate since he hev been gone away?" demanded Birt anxiously.

"He hev come home," responded Tim.

"When did he git home?" Birt asked with increasing suspicion.

"Las' week," said Tim carelessly.

Another problem! Why had Nate not communicated with his partner about their proposed work? It seemed a special avoidance.

"I onderstood ez how he aimed ter bide away longer," Birt remarked.

"He did count on stayin' longer," said Tim, "but he rid night an'

day ter git hyar sooner. It 'pears like ter me he war in sech a hurry so ez ter start ME ter work, and nuthin' else in this worl'.

I owe Nate a debt, ye see, an' I hev ter work it out. I hev been so onlucky ez I couldn't make out ter pay him nohow in the worl'. Ye see, I traded with Nate fur a shoat, an' the spiteful beastis sneaked out'n my pen, an' went rootin' round the aidge o' the clearin', an' war toted off bodaciously by a bar ez war a-prowlin'

round thar. An' I got no good o' that thar shoat, 'kase the bar hed him, but I hed to pay fur him all the same. An' dad gin his cornsent ter Nate ter let me work a month an' better fur him, ter pay out'n debt fur the shoat."

"What work be you-uns goin' ter do?" Birt had a strong impression, amounting to a conviction, that there was something behind all this, which he was slowly approaching.

"Why," said Tim, in surprise, "hain't ye hearn bout'n Nate's new land what he hev jes' got 'entered' ez he calls it? He hev got a grant fur it from the land-office down yander in Sparty, whar he hev been."

"New land--'ENTERED!'" faltered Birt.