The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Elia W. Peattie

by Elia W. Peattie

  “We-all bin havin’ a good deal of disturbance raound heah, lately,” volunteered the mountaineer.

  “Yes, so I hear.”

  “What with the Shehens defendin’ theah h’athstones, an th’ Babbses raisin’ hell, ’twas bad enough—trouble an’ to spa-h. An’ now th’ revinooers—”

  “I didn’t know they’d been giving you trouble lately.”

  Berenson did not feel that he ran any risk in identifying his companion with the “blockaders.” Loyal mountain sentiment, as he knew, was with the keepers of the stills.

  “Yaas, they’ve bin amongst us ag’in. As I was sayin’, all this makes us more inquirin’ than polite, sah, an’ it’s my place to find out the business of them that comes to the gap. As we ah gittin’ mighty neah thah this minute, I’ve got to come to th’ p’int.” He smiled at Berenson ingratiatingly.

  “Well,” said Berenson, slipping from his horse and taking his place beside his inquisitor, “you shall have a full and complete answer. I’m a newspaper man, and I’ve come down here to inquire into the meaning of this feud—this Shehen-Babb difficulty that has been going on down here for the past twenty-five years—or is it longer?”

  “I don’t know jes’ the numbah of yeahs, but it’s in the fourth generation, sah. But I don’t see why it should consahn outsidahs, sah.”

  Berenson looked at him with genuine interest. He had a dignity and a grace that were almost distinguished. He bore himself with nonchalance—something as might any clansman, certain of the rights of his position, and firm in his ability to protect his own. He was young—not more than twenty-two. His tan-coloured jeans hung easily upon his lithe and muscular body. His eyes had a kindly expression at moments, but in repose were marked by a certain mournfulness.

  “Well,” said Berenson, “the newspapers have fallen into the way of thinking that everything is their business. They are probably wrong, but as long as I work for them—and I don’t know enough to make my living any other way—I shall act according to their policy. Now, up North, we have become greatly interested in your feud. We have quarrels of our own up there, but they are not inherited quarrels. We don’t carry on a fight from the grave to the cradle, and the cradle to the grave. We don’t keep on fighting after we’ve forgotten what the row is about, and we want to know why you do. It strikes us that you have the habits of the old Highlanders, and that these vendettas of yours resemble the old wars of the clans—”

  “Waal,” interrupted the other, with a philosophical intonation. “We all are Scotch or Irish, mostly.”

  “That’s so!” cried Berenson.“Of course you are! Anyway, I’ve come down here to get an impartial account of the whole matter, and I want to meet any man—as many men as I can—who will give me the rights of it.”

  The mountaineer motioned Berenson to stop. He turned to the side of the road, unslung a horn cup from his shoulder, and, stooping, brought it up filled with glistening spring water. He held it out to Berenson with a charming gesture of hospitality. Berenson bowed and accepted it.

  “It’s good watah,” said the other.“I’m fond of watah myself.” He spoke as if his taste were rather exotic.

  “Waal, I’m powahful glad, Mr.—”

  “Berenson—Edward Berenson.”

  “—Berenson, that yo’ bin so squah in tellin’ me of yo’ business. We don’t have many visitahs from ovah yon. ’Bout th’ only ones that come heah ah th’ revinooers, an’ I needn’t say, sah, to a man like yo’, that they ah not pahticularly welcome. ’Bout fo’ yeahs ago a fellow from Mr. Wattehson’s papah did come t’ these pahts when they was some shootin’, an’ he took sides with th’ Babbs.” (A pause.) “He nevah went back.” They stopped on a level bit of road to breathe themselves, and Berenson received and returned the whimsical smile of his companion. “But what I like about you,” went on the mountaineer, “is that yo’ said yo’ was goin’ to be impahshal. I’m an impahshal man myself, and I think we should all be impahshal. Th’ trouble with outsiders is that they ah not impahshal.”

  “Well, it’s a fine thing to be,” assented Berenson. “You make judges out of stuff like that. Any judges in your family?”

  “One, sah.”

  “Still living?”

  “No, sah. Passed away las’ yeah.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Loren Shehen, sah.”

  Berenson’s heart performed an acrobatic feat. “Are you a Shehen, sir?”

  “I have that honah, sah. I’m th’ last.”

  “You don’t, I’m sure, mean that you are the last survivor?”

  “No, sah, I do not. I mean I’m the youngest bohn. Theah’s a numbah of us yet on Tulula mountain, sah. Theah’s my fathah, an’ my two eldah brothahs, an my Uncle Dudley and one son of his, an’ my second cousin Edgah—an’ theah ah othahs, kinfolk, but not close related. The Judge was with us last yeah, but he was killed, by a hull pahcel of Babbs—a hull yelpin’ pack of ’em.”

  “You’ve lived here all your life, Mr. Shehen?”

  The mountaineer’s eyes twinkled.

  “Waal, not yit, Mr. Berenson, but I expect to, sah.”

  Berenson smiled.

  “I should think, however, that in spite of the impartial disposition which you say is native to you, Mr. Shehen, that you would have difficulty in dealing with the matter of the feud without some heat.”

  “No heat at all, sah! You don’t git heated when yo’ speak of rattlesnakes, do yeh? They ah jest snakes! You kill ’em when yo’ kin. Well, Babbs ah th’ same. They ah the meanest set of snakes that crawl on theah bellies. That’s an impahshal opinion, sah. Yo’ kin ask th’ next man we meet.”

  Berenson gave up all effort to keep a sober face. He grinned, then guffawed. He made the rocks ring with his laughter. The mountaineer regarded him indulgently.

  “It’s a true wohd,” he said quietly.

  “I haven’t had your full name yet,” said Berenson, when he got breath again.

  “Bill Shehen, sah—young Bill.”

  “Well, I’m glad I met you, Mr. Shehen! I want to hear your side of the story from beginning to end. Now where can I put up? I want to stay here for some time. It’s not alone on account of my paper. I need the rest. I’m tired. I want to talk with all the Shehens I can, and all the Babbs I can.”

  “Now that’s whah yo’ make yo’ mistake, sah. Yo’ cain’t talk with both Shehens an’ Babbs. If yo’ go on to th’ Gap with me, and bunk at my place tonight—an’ yo’ ah welcome, sah—yo’ve got to ’bide with us. Yo’ will be counted a Shehen sympathizah. I don’t suppose anyone from th’ outside kin ondehstand, sah. I don’t expect ’em to do so. I thought about it a plenty. It’s jest this: bein’ bohn a Shehen, yo’ nuss hate fo’ th’ Babbs with yo’ mothah’s milk; bein’ bohn a Babb, yo’ git silly mad evah time yo’ see a Shehen. Bein’ of one kind, yo’ cain’t pass the othah kind on th’ road; yo’ cain’t heah of anything they do without a cold feelin’ in yo’ stomach. When yo’ git to fightin’ ’em, yo’ feel like shoutin’ like the niggahs at praise meetin’. I thought it ovah, sah, an’ I’ve about come to the conclusion that it’s a disease. Folks call it a feud. Well, I call it a disease—the Shehen-Babb disease.”

  Berenson put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Well, then, William Shehen, if you’ve found that out, why don’t you cure yourself? If it’s a disease, it’s a fatal one! It brings your men to untimely death, and your women to sorrow. Don’t set your sons—when you get them—in the way of inheriting the same fearful malady. Get out and get away from it all. Do something besides destroy and make bad whisky. For you do make whisky, I suppose.”

  “Yaas,” said the other gently, “but it ain’t so damned bad.” His voice had soughing intonations, like the wind in the pines.

  “I’ll wager you’ve got a bottle of it in your pocket now,” said Berenson.

  “Waal!” the wind was never softer on a summer night.

  “Well, I’ve a bottle of the ordinary whisky of
commerce. I’ll bet mine is the smoother, the nuttier, and altogether the pleasanter.”

  Three buzzards sitting on the dead branch of a Norway pine received a shock from which they did not recover for several days. They had seen walking along the road two quiet men, one sad mare, and a long thin dog with a lame foot. They suddenly beheld a swift change—a tableau vivant. One man stood at the point of the other man’s rifle. The mare had jerked away and was backing, with frightened eyes, toward the verge of the steep mountain side. The dog had crouched down as if to get out of the way of trouble.

  “I believe yo’ all ah a damned revinooer aftah all!” said Shehen. He did not raise his voice, but he spoke between closed teeth. His blue gray eyes had become like points of steel. Berenson, equally tall, in his dark, city clothes, his inappropriate derby above his long, office-bleached face, looked Shehen squarely in the eye.

  “I’m not,” he said.“I’m just what I told you I was. I haven’t a firearm on me. If you shoot, you kill an unarmed man. Besides, you will have made a mistake. The only trouble is, that while I like your jokes, you don’t like mine. Up North, when we don’t like a man’s jokes, we tell him he’s an ass; we don’t kill him.”

  The buzzards saw the tableau remain, for an appreciable moment, undisturbed. Then the mountaineer lowered his rifle and flung it back upon his arm. He looked shamefaced. Something like tears came into his embarrassed eyes. Berenson regarded him coldly. The other, meeting the expression, flushed scarlet. Then he shook his fist before Berenson’s eyes.

  “That’s it,” he cried.“That’s what I say! The life heah makes— fools of us! We ah afeahd of shadows! We have nothin’ to show fo’ ouah lives! We live to kill—that’s it—we live to kill. What has my family done fo’ the community? What is the community? It’s a beautiful country, but what do we do with it? We live like wolves, sah—like wolves. Ain’t that how we seem to yo’ all?”

  He was suddenly no more than a boy. His height seemed, indeed, to have belied him. He looked his passionate inquiry at Berenson, who warmed again into liking.

  “Why don’t you get out of it all?” demanded Berenson.“Cut it! Quit it! Vamoose! Come where they’re doing something— where they’re talking about something worth while. Why, you’re an intelligent fellow. You’ve courage. You’ve had some education, too, haven’t you?”

  “Dad sent me to Hahdin to the Industrial school; an’ I’ve some books. I take pleasuah in readin’, sah.”

  “I knew it! Well, get out of this place and make a man of yourself.”

  Shehen said nothing. To the acute disappointment of the buzzards, the horse was recaptured, the dog recovered, and the two men went on side by side.

  The buzzards spread their wings, stretched their necks with a disgusted gesture, and flew away. Silence fell upon the travellers. They were coming to a hamlet. Back from the road, bowered in roses, was a tumble-down house. It was built of logs, and divided in the centre by an open chamber. Three wolf-like dogs ran out to greet Shehen. The mountaineer stopped to welcome them, rubbing his hands over their backs, scratching them behind the ears, and finally lifting one of them up in his arms.

  “They seem to be very quiet hounds,” said Berenson. “How did you teach them to be so well behaved?”

  Berenson’s companion regarded him with amusement. “Thah’s reasons, sah, why the Shehens’ houn-dogs hes to be quiet. We nevah did publish ouah place of residence! But thah’s times when they cain’t be kep’ still, an’ that’s when one of the clan has bad luck comin’ to him. They ah well trained, sah, but they do have theah times of howlin’!”

  “And about that time,” suggested Berenson, “you want to get your rabbit-foot out.”

  Bill Shehen nodded.

  “If you’ve got one handy,” he agreed. “Fathah an’ th’ boys have been in a little trouble this week. They ah all away. Come in and spend th’ night, sah. I want to talk to yo’.”

  It was said with the conviction that a refusal was impossible. And, indeed, Berenson considered it so. They put up the horse, and went into the great living room, which ran across one entire side of the house—three bedrooms occupying the other side. Shehen pointed to a crayon picture on the wall—the only picture in the room.

  “That’s my mothah,” he said with a sweet and frank reverence. “She died last yeah.” The portrait was a poor one, but it could not conceal the look of fatality in the dead woman’s eyes. It was the same look that Berenson had noticed in the eyes of her son. A wave of compassion for both of them swept over him. He was left alone for a moment, and he stood before the crayon, seeing yet not seeing it.

  They ate together, and then sat out beneath the hoary hemlocks, and watched the moon rise, scarlet, over the mountain’s brow. Berenson felt at ease—at ease with the night, and the place, and the man. The whip-poor-will iterated his foolish call from below them, and almost above their heads the hoot owl cried.

  “I can’t say but that I’d be willing to get along without those two birds,” said Berenson.

  “They ah very insistin’,” agreed Shehen. “Of co’se I know how to make that hoot owl shet up, but the whip-pooah-will is one too many for me.”

  “And how can you make the hoot owl hush? By killing it?” Shehen grinned.

  “Thah’s ways of doin’ things up here that you all woulden’ take stock in,” he ventured.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. What do you suggest?”

  “Yo’all take off youah slippah, sah, an’ change the right slippah to the lef ’ foot an’ see what happens.”

  The industrious owl was in full cry as Berenson bent to obey this extraordinary request. But her mournful gurgle died in her throat.

  “She’ll shet up now,” murmured Shehen, lazily lighting his pipe. And so she did. Not another sound issued from her depressing throat. Berenson made the echoes ring with laughter.

  “You don’t believe such stuff, man?”

  “No-o,” pensively murmured the mountaineer. “We don’t none of us believe in it! It jes’ happens that a-way, that’s all. An’ I may say, jes’ fo’ yo’ info’mation, thet if yo’ haven’t on slippahs and it’s inconvenient to change youah boots, heatin’ a pokah red hot will do jes’ as well.”

  “Thanks,” said Berenson, and told of some family superstitions of his own.

  But they talked of wiser things, too. Shehen liked books, as he said, and he showed Berenson a catalogue of the year’s publications, with the volumes he had purchased or proposed to buy, marked off. He turned to serious matters; was fascinated with popular science, and expressed a wish to have a “star-glass” of his own. He knew the names of the constellations, it appeared, and he called his companion’s attention to the colour of the different stars.

  “I may be wrong,” the Washington man said to the mountaineer that night, “but I think you are wasting yourself here. You ought to have more appreciation of yourself. The only way you can take your own measure is by standing up alongside other men. You’re made for happiness and society and some nice girl’s love, and good books and a home of your own. I can’t think why you’ve not seen all this for yourself.”

  The mountaineer reached a hand down to stroke one of the dogs.

  “I reckon I’ve seen it,” he said.“But my ole dad is one to have his way. They call him the Ten-Tined Buck of Tulula mountain. It never was much good runnin’ counter to him.”

  “Will you come up to Washington with me if I get his consent? I’ll stay here and get acquainted with him, and I’ll locate you up there in some way. I tell you, when the chance really offers he’ll want you to avail yourself of it. You’ll see!”

  The sound of the “branch” dripping over the rocks came to their ears. The hermit thrush cast the soft pearls of his melody upon the air. With infinite rustlings, the night settled about them, beneficent as a prayer.

  “I mout try it up there,” mused the mountaineer. “But I was always a home-keepin’ fellow.”

  Berenson went to bed perplexed. The bo
y was as innocent and wistful as a girl, outlaw though he confessed himself. Having—inadvertently—finished too quickly and too disastrously his own individual interest in life, Berenson had fallen into a way of deriving vicarious zest by interfering in the lives of others. And, the case of young Bill Shehen seemed to offer a rare opportunity for his benevolent vice.

  Three weeks later Berenson went back to Washington. The period of his investigation had not been without adventure— even danger. He had made enemies and friends; he had felt partisanship. He had absorbed something of the point of view of these courteous, murderous, soft-voiced, battle-loving, mountain-whelped, clannish, affectionate, sentimental, law-defying men. He liked them—liked their inconsistencies, their excesses, their barbarism, their hospitality, their piety, and their heathenism. And he carried to Washington with him, as friend and companion, one William Shehen, junior, son of Tulula’s “Ten-Tined Buck.”

  If Shehen was shy, he was also sociable. He had a way with mountains—understood them and answered them—but he had a way with men, too. He was always graceful, and he looked well in the soft gray suit which he got at Berenson’s advice, and in the drooping gray felt hat. He carried himself with nonchalance, took long, swinging strides, looked men almost too insistently in the eye, and was rather elaborate in his courtesy. He had, as a part of his indestructible possession, a knowledge of how educated men talked. He had read, and he had remembered. Away from his native environment, he employed something of this knowledge, which came within his literary, but not his actual, experience. The soft tricks of his earth-born, forest-nurtured speech clung to him, but in Washington these were not marked as amazing. His naïveté and his gentleness won him friends.

  Berenson soon found an office position for him, and he filled it with faithfulness, though his patron never dropped in to see him that he was not distressed at the curious wistfulness in the boy’s eyes. He who had known only his own will now submitted, from eight in the morning till half after five in the evening, to the will of others. His days were given up to minutiæ, every last particle of which was laid out for him. He had hitherto acted solely on his own initiative, or had followed the rough autocracy of old Bill, his father, the leader of his herd—the Ten-Tined Buck of Tulula Mountain. He was captive now—this wild creature, whose caprices had been his guide. Berenson pitied him, yet expected ultimate happiness for him. Civilization might be rather a stupid escape from barbarism, but after all, when a barbarian got to yearning for civilization, as Shehen had, it seemed best to give it to him.