The Heart of the Hills Part 23

Through the window the boy saw the two hors.e.m.e.n who had pa.s.sed him in the road that morning. His eyes grew wild and he began to tremble violently, but he stood still. The old man went to the door.

"Hyeh he is, men," he shouted; "come in hyeh an' git him."

Then he turned to the boy.

"You air goin' back thar an' stand yore trial like a man."

The boy leaped wildly for the door, but the old man caught him and with one hand held him as though he were a child, and thus the two astonished detectives from the Blue-gra.s.s found them, and they gaped at the mystery, for they knew the kins.h.i.+p of the two. One pulled from his pocket a pair of handcuffs, and old Jason glared at him with contempt.

"Don't you put them things on this boy--he's my grandson. An', anyhow, ef you two full-grown men can't handle a boy without 'em I'll go 'long with you myself."

Shamed, the man put the irons back in his pocket, and the other one started to speak but stopped. The old man turned hospitably toward his unwelcome guests.

"I reckon all o' ye want a bite to eat afore ye start. Mammy!"

The door to the kitchen opened and the aged grandmother halted there, peering through bra.s.s-rimmed spectacles at her husband and the two men, and catching sight last of little Jason standing in the corner--trapped, white-faced, silent. Instantly she caught the meaning of the scene, and with a little cry she tottered over to the boy and putting both her hands on his breast began to pat him gently. Then, still helplessly patting him with one hand, she turned to her husband.

"You hain't goin' to give the boy up, Jason?" she asked plaintively, and the old man swerved his face aside and nodded.

"Git up somethin' to eat, mammy," he said with rough gentleness, and without another look or word she turned with her ap.r.o.n at her eyes to the kitchen door. The old man glared out the window, the boy sank on a chair at the corner of the fireplace, and in the face of one of the men there was sympathy. The other, s.h.i.+fty of eyes and crafty of face, spoke harshly.

"How much o' this reward do you want?"

Old Jason wheeled and the other man cried sternly:

"Shut up, you fool!"

"You lop-yeared rattlesnake!" began old Jason, and with a contemptuous gesture dismissed him. "How much is that reward?"

The other man hesitated, and then with the thought that the fact would soon be world-known answered promptly:

"For the capture and conviction of the murderer--one hundred thousand dollars."

The old man gasped at the amazing sum; his face worked suddenly with convulsive rage and calmed in a sudden way that made the watching boy know that something was going to happen. Quietly old Jason walked over to the fire and stood with his back to it. He pulled out his pipe, filled it, and turned again to the mantel- piece as though to reach for a match, but instead whipped two big revolvers from it and wheeled.

"Hands up, men!" he said quietly. For a moment the two were paralyzed, but the thick-set man, whose instincts were quicker, obeyed slowly. The other one started to laugh.

"Up!" called the old man sternly, levelling one pistol, and the laugh stopped, the man's face paled, and his hands flew high.

"Git their guns fer a minute, Jasie, an' put em' up hyeh on the mantel. A hundred thousand dollars is a LEETLE too much."

The kitchen door opened and again the old woman peered through her spectacles within.

"I knowed you wouldn't do it, pap," she said. "Dinner's ready-- come on in now, men, an' git a bite to eat."

The thin man's s.h.i.+fty eyes roved to his companion, who had almost begun to smile and who muttered to himself as he rose:

"Well, by G.o.d!"

In utter silence the meal went through, except that the old man, with his pistols crossed in his lap, kept urging his guests to the full of their appet.i.tes. Jason ate like a wolf.

"Git a poke, mammy," said old Jason when the boy dropped knife and fork, "an' fill it full o' victuals."

And still with a smile the thick-set man watched her gather food from the table, put it in a paper sack, and hand it to the boy.

"Now git, Jasie--these men air goin' to stay hyeh with me fer'

bout an hour, an' then they can go atter ye ef they think they can ketch ye."

With no word at all even of good-by, little Jason noiselessly disappeared. A few minutes later, sitting in front of the fire with his pistols still in his lap, old Jason Hawn explained:

"Fer a mule, a Winchester, and a hundred dollars I can git most any man in this country killed. Fer a thousand I reckon I could git hit proved that I had stole a side o' bacon or a hoss. Fer a hundred thousand I could git hit proved that the President of these United States killed that feller--an' human natur' is about the same, I reckon, ever'whar. You don't git no grandson o' mine when thar's a bunch o' greenbacks like that tied to the rope that's a-pinin' to hang him."

An hour later he told his guests that they could be on their way, though he'd be mighty glad to have 'em stay all night--and they went, both chagrined, the thin one raging within but obedient and respectful without, while the other, chuckling at his companion's discomfiture and no little at his own, watched with a smile the old fellow's method of speeding his parting guests.

"Git on yo' hosses, men," he suggested, and when the two stepped from the porch he replaced his own guns on the mantel and followed them with both of their guns in one hand and a Winchester in the other. While they were mounting he walked to the corner of the yard, laid both their pistols on the fence, walked back to the porch, and stood there with his Winchester in the hollow of his arm.

"Ride by thar, men, and git yo' guns; an' I reckon," he suggested casually but convincingly, "when you pick 'em up you better not EVEN LOOK BACK--NARY ONE O' YE."

"Can you beat it?" murmured the quiet man, while the other snarled helplessly.

"An' when you git down to town you can tell the sheriff. He's a Honeycutt, an' he won't come atter me, but I'll go down thar to him an' pay my leetle fine."

Again the man said:

"Well, BY G.o.d!"

And as the two rode on, the old fellow's voice followed them:

"Come ag'in, men--I wish ye both well."

Two nights later St. Hilda, reading by her fire, heard a tap on her window-pane, and, looking up, saw Jason's pale face outside.

She ran to the door, and the boy stumbled wearily toward the threshold and stopped with a look of fear and piteous appeal. She stretched out her arms to him, and, broken at last, the boy sank at her feet, and, with his head in her lap, sobbed out of his heart the truth.

XXIX

St. Hilda herself took Jason back to the Blue-gra.s.s, took him to the gray frowning prison at the capital, and with streaming eyes watched the iron gates close between them. Then she went home, sent for John Burnham, and within an hour both started working for the boy's freedom, for Jason must keep on with his studies, and, with Steve Hawn in jail, must help his mother. Through Gray's influence Colonel Pendleton, and through Marjorie's, Mrs.

Pendleton as well, offered to go sponsors for the boy's appearance at his trial. The man from the Pennyroyal who sat in the governor's chair, and even the successor to the autocrat who was trying to pre-empt that seat, gave letters to help, and before any prison pallor could touch the boy's sun-tanned face he was out in the open air once more on bail. And when old Jason Hawn in the mountains heard what had happened, he laughed.

"Well, I reckon if he's indicted only fer HELPIN' Steve, he ain't in much danger, fer they can't git him onless they git Steve, an'

if thar IS one man no money can ketch--that man is slick Steve Hawn. An' lemme tell ye: if the right feller was from the mountains an' only mountain folks knows it, they hain't NUVER goin' to find him out. Mebbe I was a leetle hasty--mebbe I was."

After one talk with John Burnham, the old president suggested that Jason drop down into the "kitchen" and go on with his books, but against this plan Jason shook his head. He was going to raise Steve Hawn's tobacco crop on shares with Colonel Pendleton, he would study at home, and John Burnham saw, moreover, that the boy shrank from the ordeal of college a.s.sociations and any further hurt to his pride.

The pores of the earth were beginning to open now to the warm breath of spring. Already Martha Hawn and Mavis had burnt brush on the soil to kill the gra.s.s, and Jason ploughed the soil and harrowed it with minute care, and sowed the seed broadcast by hand. Within two weeks lettuce-like leaves were peeping through the ground, and Jason and Mavis stretched canvas over the beds to hold in the heat of day and hold off the frost of night. Three weeks later came the first ploughing; then there was ploughing and ploughing and ploughing again, and weeding and weeding and weeding again. Just before ripening, the blooms came--blooms that were for all the word like the blooms of purple rhododendron back in the hills, and then the task of suckering began. Sometimes Mavis would help and the mother started in to work like a man, but the boy had absorbed from his environment its higher ideal of woman and, all he could, he kept both of them out of the tobacco field. This made it all the harder for him and there was no let-up to his toil.

Just the same, Jason put in every spare moment on his books, and in Mavis's little room, which had been turned over to him, his lamp burned far into every night. When he struck a knotty point or problem, he would walk over to John Burnham's for help, or the school-master, as he went to and fro from his college duties, would find the boy on a fence by the roadside waiting with his question for him. All the summer Jason toiled. When there was no hard labor, always he had to fight the tobacco worms with spray, and hand, and boot-heel, until the rich dark-green of the leaves took on a furry, velvety sheen--until at ripening they turned to a bright gold and were ready for the chisel-bladed, double-edged knife with which the plants are cut close to the ground. Then they must be hung on upright tobacco sticks, stalks upward, to wilt under the August sun, and then on to be housed in Colonel Pendleton's great barns to dry within their slitted walls. Several times during the summer Arch Hawn came by and looked at the boy's work with keen, approving eye and in turn won a falling-off in Jason's old prejudice against him; for Arch had built a church in the county-seat in the mountains, had helped the county schools, was making ready to help the mountain people fight unjust claims to their lands, and, himself charged with helping to bring the mountain army down to the capital, stood boldly ready to surrender to the call of the law--he even meant to help Steve Hawn in his trouble, for Steve, after an examining trial, had been remanded back to prison without bail: and he was going to help Jason in his trial, which would closely follow Steve's.