Fuming, sick, and with an aching head, Frank hovered in the background. His stomach was heaving; he swallowed hard, to keep from vomiting. And the light eager voice went on and on, accompanied by bursts of laughter from the O’Leary brothers. Jealousy tormented Frank. Then, after something the girlish fool had said, he heard Wade give a sharp exclamation. Now there was no laughter. Frank stared at Bob Gratwick, and saw that the smiling face had become pale and tight and hard.
“Yes, you heard me right, Wade. That’s what I’ve been doing. The warrants were served on Big Les and his sons yesterday, and I’m after all the other moonshiners, too. Why do you look like that? Law is law, isn’t it? It isn’t a matter of ‘revenue agents’ any more. We have Prohibition in the country, and the sooner these hill-billies learn that, the better for them.”
He waited for a comment, but Wade and Peter, after glancing at each other, stared at Bob somberly. He went on angrily: “I’m a deputy sheriff! That’s my duty.”
Then Wade spoke in a tone Frank had never heard from him before: “You’ve made it your duty, Bob. It isn’t duty, in a way. You’re just so damned righteous. That’s what makes it wrong—”
“Now, you’re not ‘talkin’ clever,’” said Bob’s precise voice, reverting to the mountain idiom. “Law is law. I took my oath, and I’m going to live up to it.”
Wade’s tone was even tighter: “Bob, you’ve always hated your own people, haven’t you? I don’t know why; maybe you don’t either. Your father’s a mountain man, and he’s always—worshipped you. Perhaps you don’t like your father? You don’t need to answer. I’m just trying to find out what makes you tick, Bob. Maybe you’re just a righteous bastard, with a talent for interference in the lives of others. Now,” and he raised his hand, “you don’t have to try to justify yourself with me. But let’s be sensible, for this is very serious. Your people have made whisky for generations, here in the mountains. It’s in their blood; they consider it their supreme right, part of their life. You know that as well as I do. They’ve fought revenue agents since the first agent was sent into these hills. They considered an agent worse than a mere law officer. He was infringing on their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness. They’re free men; they wouldn’t have a ‘foreigner’ dictate to them. That was their code of freedom, and they fought for it—”
“You’re evading the issue!” cried Bob, irritated and flushed. “I’m not going to answer your ridiculous accusations about me hating my—these—people, and my father. My father! That’s really absurd, Wade. The issue, now, is that I’m a deputy sheriff, of this county, and that we now have national prohibition, and I’m going to enforce the law!”
“And you’ve sent Big Les and his sons to jail—mountaineers who will die if they are deprived even for a little while of their freedom! You’ve sent them to jail, because they made whisky, as their fathers made it, and their grandfathers and their great-great-grandfathers before them.”
“Don’t you believe in the law of the United States of America!” exclaimed Bob, outraged. His fair skin had flushed dark.
“Law, hell!” interposed Peter, with loud rudeness. “You aren’t interested in law, and you know it, even though you try to kid yourself! You’re interested in satisfying your malice, though I suppose you’ve told yourself that you are just a fine, upstanding law officer!”
“You can’t talk to me that way!” Bob’s face had suddenly drained itself of color.
Wade took a step toward him and spoke more quietly: “Bob, what does your father say about this?”
Bob’s jawbone tightened, but he did not look away from Wade: “He feels, wrongly, as you do.” Then his voice quickened, almost imploringly: “Wade, that’s why. I wanted you to come back with me and talk to him. He—he’s an ignorant old man, and he’s illiterate, and he doesn’t understand. You do. You know very well that you Mormons don’t approve of alcohol. I thought you’d help me,” he added, with young helplessness. “I don’t understand you, Wade.”
“I’m not talking of law now, Bob,” said Wade, almost gently, as to a child. “I’m talking of human psychology, of mountain psychology. Your people won’t think of you as an officer of the law upholding your oath. They’ll see you as a man who dares to infringe on their old proud rights.”
“There are no ‘rights’ above the law,” said Bob steadily. Wade sighed. “I hate to hear anyone say that,” he said. “When a man believes, that, he has lost his freedom, his Americanism. He is ripe for autocracy. What is law? In a democracy, an edict passed by the majority. But the majority is not always right. It is up to good men, everywhere, to examine every law before it is passed, and if it is a bad law, passed by ignorant or vicious men in the name of the majority, then the men of good will should set out to abrogate it, in the name of liberty and honor.”
“That is unconstitutional,” protested Bob Gratwick, “and you know it. That’s bolshevism.”
“I see you read the timid newspapers,” said Wade. “Look here, Bob, there’s a moral law and a legal one. They aren’t necessarily the same. But perhaps you’ll learn that some day.” He paused. “This is very serious.”
“If I were you, I’d make for the wide open country, or the towns, as fast as you can ride,” said Peter, with grim humor. “The men here are pretty good with a gun.”
Bob lifted his chin proudly. “I’m not afraid of these illiterate pigs,” he said. Now his voice became hard, almost vicious, and his eyes flashed. “It’s about time someone put the fear of God into them.”
“I thought so,” said Wade somberly.
Frank had listened to this conversation with great interest, momentarily forgetting his own troubles. His dislike for Bob Gratwick became intense. The self-righteous bastard! What was behind his lofty talk? Hate? Most probably. Whom, and why, did he hate?
Peter was slapping his holster with loud ostentation. Bob heard it, finally, and swung on him almost savagely. “What are you trying to do? Frighten me? No one can frighten me, so stop rattling that thing, I tell you!”
Wade put his hand on his brother’s arm, but looked at Bob: “What does Betty Saunders say about this, Bobby?”
Bob Gratwick hesitated. “She is teaching school in Paintsville. She never asks questions. She knows that duty is duty.”
“Does she know that you came up here deliberately to injure and imprison her people, and that you volunteered because you know their ways so well, and where they hide their miserable stills?”
They were all so engrossed that no one except Frank heard the muffled sound of hoofs approaching. He was the first to look up and see a group of three horsemen, mountaineers with strong beards and harsh faces. They held their rifles in their hands, and their eyes were murderous, glinting in the sweet sunshine.
CHAPTER 55
Frank’s first emotion, as he saw the mountaineers, was revulsion mixed with detestation. He never saw any of them without this first wincing of disgust. The snuff-rubbing, dirty, tobacco-chewing and illiterate swine! He could smell them as they sat above him; he could see their stained blue overalls with the brass buttons and galluses, the sweat-reeking shirts, the battered straw hats, the manure-caked boots. He recognized them. He had poured typhoid serum into them; he had rubbed smallpox vaccine into their scrawny but muscular arms. And he had wished, while doing so, that it were cyanide or tetanus germs.
Frank could not keep back his loathing as he shouted to them: “What do you want?” They had probably just come from their battered little church down the road, where, even now, he could hear the obscene yowling of the congregation. He had attended one session, a week ago, on the occasion of the circuit rider’s first “service.” He had sat there on the dirty wooden bench, in the midst of the sun-bonneted women and the squawling children and the denim-shirted men. The circuit rider, a lanky, gaunt-faced man in dusty clothing, had stood in the wooden pulpit, and had cried out: “In my Father’s house are many mansions! In my Father’s house are many mansions! Mansions! God! My Father’s house!
Mansions! Mansions! Mansions! I wouldn’t tell you if ’tweren’t true! True! Mansions.” That was all. No “proper” singing, no prayer books, no ceremony, no sermon, only that howling, demented and insane and incoherent, in the bare-planked, stinking little church, while the congregation began to sway rhythmically and to mutter. Then, to Frank’s utter stupefaction, the men and women suddenly went mad. They leapt to their feet, jumping up and down, throwing themselves upon the floor, rolling into the benches and scattering them, embracing one another in their prone positions, biting one another, screeching, howling, shrieking, while the circuit rider cavorted and screamed in his pulpit. Frank had fled in complete consternation, climbing over benches, fearful that some rabid worshipper might bite him in the ankle or calf, or catch him and roll him over and over in the tangled heap of them. He had stood outside, trembling and shuddering, listening to the inhuman chorus inside, hearing the banging of benches and the thresh of flailing arms and the screeching of the “minister.”
When he had related the episode to Wade, the latter had been calm. “The oldest, the most primitive manifestation of religious ecstasy,” he had said. “Don’t look so horrified, Frank. You can see this in the African jungles, in the Indian dances. It is a strange phenomenon, I admit, but it has its interesting side. These people call it ‘bein’ taken over by the Spirit.’ Poor things.”
But Frank’s loathing had not abated. He had not found this religious madness either “quaint” or “interesting.” He had found in it something terrible and revolting. And now, as he looked up at the mountaineers, fresh from their yowling and their biting, he wished that his eyes could blast them into the earth.
At his demand, Peter and Wade and Bob Gratwick swung about. Then, it was as if they had been struck into petrified immobility. Frank waited for Wade to speak to the horsemen, to smile and greet them. But Wade stood rigid. His brother took a single step to his side. It was curious, but all at once Frank saw that the two brothers had interposed themselves between the mountaineers and Bob Gratwick. It was done almost without movement.
Then Wade said, quietly and easily, his voice strangely loud in the mountain quiet: “Howdy, Hank. Howdy, Eli, Jeremiah.”
Bob Gratwick had turned white as death; he had shrunk in his fine clothing. But he did not move. He turned his pale face towards the mountaineers, and stood in silence behind the O’Leary brothers. He had given a single glance at the hospital, and had apparently abandoned his idea of flight as hopeless, some fifteen feet lay between him and safety.
Frank stared at them all, incredulously. Something in the air caused his flesh to prickle. He smelled urgent, stark danger. He looked at Wade. He looked at Peter. Peter had, imperceptibly, unfastened the flap of his holster; his hand lay on the butt of the revolver, and though he appeared at ease, there was something intent and watchful about him.
The mountaineers sat their horses in grim silence. They looked only at Bob Gratwick. Frank could see their faces, tight, gaunt and ferocious. The yowling in the church rose to an unbearable crescendo. Beyond the mountaineers the mountains showed green against the soft and radiant sky, and three geese, a gander, goose and gosling, lumbered down the road in dignified single file. The three stores across the road reflected the sunlight on their dusty windows. There was no one else about but these men on horseback, Frank, the O’Learys and Bob Gratwick.
Frank had known petty violence in his life, but never before had he felt this wild violence which lay all about him and the others. He could not believe it. What was the intention of these primitive creatures on horseback? It must be something serious. Wade’s dark face was closed and stern; Peter’s friendly expression was gone, and had been replaced by something locked and hard. Bob Gratwick stood behind his friends like a condemned man.
As the mountaineers did not answer him or look away from Bob, Wade said: “How is your Missus, Eli? How’s the baby? Got over his fits?”
The mountaineers, who had not moved but had sat like statues for the past few minutes, now glanced at one another. The man, Eli, cleared his throat, and clenched his hand on the rifle which lay across his saddle. The other men repeated his gesture. Eli said: “The Missus is all right, Parson, but tard. Kid’s doin’ well. Thanks to you.” He paused, then resumed in a growling tone: “Don’t aim to have no trouble with you, Parson. Hope we ain’t a-goin’ to have it. Ain’t that right, boys?”
His friends mumbled an affirmative.
Then Peter spoke: “Why aren’t you boys in church? Hear there’s a high old time back there.”
The men shifted their rifles, lifted them simultaneously. Frank had never looked into the muzzle of a rifle before, and he found the sight unpleasant. Eli said: “Parson, we’d be a sight pleased if you and yore friends would kindly step aside. We got business with that pole-cat behind you.”
Peter’s hand moved slightly on his revolver. Frank saw that he had gripped the butt. But Wade was speaking with great quietness: “Look here, boys, none of us want trouble. This is our hospital, and there’re a lot of your sick friends in there. Why don’t you go home, and forget about this? If there is anything I can do to straighten things out—”
Frank caught a pent note in Wade’s voice, a strong determination. He had fixed his dark eyes on the men whom he had rescued from death, whose friend he had been, whose wives he had delivered, and whose children he had saved from desperate diseases. He said: “You’ve always been my friends, and I have been yours. I’ve never asked anything of you except to let me help you. You’ve begged me, time and time again, to let you do me a favor. I’ve never taken you up on it. I am going to, now. Go home. Forget about this.”
The men looked at him from their height, and their stern faces changed into a strange expression of regret and affection. Jeremiah said, his voice almost soft: “Parson, we uns know what you’ve did for us. We ain’t denyin’ it. You’re our folks. You, and yore brother. We don’t aim to have trouble with you. If you want our hides, we uns’d give ’em. You know that. But we ain’t a-goin’ to stop doin’ what we got to do. You ain’t got no part in it. You don’t belong in these here mountings. And we aim to blast that pole-cat to hell!”
Bob Gratwick stirred. His fists clenched at his sides, and he gave the mountaineers a glance of complete loathing and detestation. His blue eyes flashed in the sunlight. “Can’t you see what they want, Wade? They intend to shoot me down. I’m just an unarmed man, one to three, but I’m dangerous, and these brave men are afraid of me.”
Peter said roughly: “Shut up, you damn fool.” He looked up at the mountaineers, and grinned. “Oh, go on home, you half-wits,” he said, humorously. “Bob’s a jackass, and now I’ll guarantee that he’ll get out of these mountains and stay away. How’s that?”
Eli listened and gazed at him with a kind of primitive dignity. “Peter, it ain’t no use a-arguin’. You don’t understand. I kin see that. He’s done somethin’ bad to all us mounting folks. He’s a mounting man hisself, and he took some of us down to the sittlements and put us in town jails. You don’t think that’s too bad. You don’t know nothin’ about it. There ain’t words for it.”
Wade said quietly: “I know. You’ve been wronged by Bob Gratwick. But you’ve got to think of yourselves. You see this hospital? The father of the girl Bob’s marrying gave it to you. Jeremiah, your wife was in this hospital for nearly a month. We saved her life. If it hadn’t been for Isaac Saunders, your wife would be dead now. Think of Isaac Saunders, and what he has done for you. Eli, your seed corn came from Isaac Saunders. You’d have starved to death without it. Hank, you had appendicitis last summer. Isaac Saunders paid for the instruments in our hospital which saved your life, and the horse you now sit on came from him. Bob’s a fool. We all know that. But you must remember Isaac, who is your friend.”
“He ain’t our friend!” cried Eli with an oath. “He worships heathen gods! That’s what our parson down yonder says! You kin talk yore sweet talk, Parson, but it ain’t a-goin’ to do any good!”
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sp; Now, at last, Frank saw anger and disgust in Wade’s eyes. “Why you damn fools!” he exclaimed. “So, you’ve got that in your heads, too? I might have known.”
Peter put his hand on his brother’s arm. “Wait a minute, Wade,” he began. But Eli shouted madly: “Heathen gods, that’s what our parson says! A-worshippin’ wimmen back there in the hills! ’Tain’t Christian! We uns be Christians, and after we git rid of this rat, we’re a-goin’ to run Isaac clear from here to Louisville! He got this bastard to put our friends in the town jail—”
Frank saw the wild and brutal faces above him, and he was frightened. He was standing apart from the group formed by the O’Learys and Bob Gratwick. Suppose he just backed away, nonchalantly, towards the corner of the hospital, and ran for it? Then he looked at Wade O’Leary, standing so dark and slender and elegant in the sunshine, completely unafraid, fiery with indignation and anger, and almost without volition he moved closer to the brothers. He was standing beside Peter now, Peter the easy and bluff and blond, and he saw Peter’s tense white fingers on the revolver.
There Was a Time Page 50