by John Fox
VIII
On a spur of Black Mountain, beyond the Kentucky line, a lean horse wastied to a sassafras bush, and in a clump of rhododendron ten yards away,a lean black-haired boy sat with a Winchester between his stomach andthighs--waiting for the dusk to drop. His chin was in both hands, thebrim of his slouch hat was curved crescent-wise over his forehead, andhis eyes were on the sweeping bend of the river below him. That wasthe "Bad Bend" down there, peopled with ancestral enemies and thehead-quarters of their leader for the last ten years. Though they hadbeen at peace for some time now, it had been Saturday in the county townten miles down the river as well, and nobody ever knew what a Saturdaymight bring forth between his people and them. So he would not riskriding through that bend by the light of day.
All the long way up spur after spur and along ridge after ridge, allalong the still, tree-crested top of the Big Black, he had been thinkingof the man--the "furriner" whom he had seen at his uncle's cabin inLonesome Cove. He was thinking of him still, as he sat there waitingfor darkness to come, and the two vertical little lines in his forehead,that had hardly relaxed once during his climb, got deeper and deeper,as his brain puzzled into the problem that was worrying it: who thestranger was, what his business was over in the Cove and his businesswith the Red Fox with whom the boy had seen him talking.
He had heard of the coming of the "furriners" on the Virginia side. Hehad seen some of them, he was suspicious of all of them, he dislikedthem all--but this man he hated straightway. He hated his boots and hisclothes; the way he sat and talked, as though he owned the earth, andthe lad snorted contemptuously under his breath:
"He called pants 'trousers.'" It was a fearful indictment, and hesnorted again: "Trousers!"
The "furriner" might be a spy or a revenue officer, but deep down in theboy's heart the suspicion had been working that he had gone over thereto see his little cousin--the girl whom, boy that he was, he had marked,when she was even more of a child than she was now, for his own. Hispeople understood it as did her father, and, child though she was,she, too, understood it. The difference between her and the"furriner"--difference in age, condition, way of life, education--meantnothing to him, and as his suspicion deepened, his hands dropped andgripped his Winchester, and through his gritting teeth came vaguely:
"By God, if he does--if he just does!"
Away down at the lower end of the river's curving sweep, the dirt roadwas visible for a hundred yards or more, and even while he was cursingto himself, a group of horsemen rode into sight. All seemed to becarrying something across their saddle bows, and as the boy's eyescaught them, he sank sidewise out of sight and stood upright, peeringthrough a bush of rhododendron. Something had happened in town thatday--for the horsemen carried Winchesters, and every foreign thought inhis brain passed like breath from a window pane, while his dark, thinface whitened a little with anxiety and wonder. Swiftly he steppedbackward, keeping the bushes between him and his far-away enemies.Another knot he gave the reins around the sassafras bush and then,Winchester in hand, he dropped noiseless as an Indian, from rock torock, tree to tree, down the sheer spur on the other side. Twentyminutes later, he lay behind a bush that was sheltered by the topboulder of the rocky point under which the road ran. His enemies were intheir own country; they would probably be talking over the happenings intown that day, and from them he would learn what was going on.
So long he lay that he got tired and out of patience, and he was aboutto creep around the boulder, when the clink of a horseshoe againsta stone told him they were coming, and he flattened to the earth andclosed his eyes that his ears might be more keen. The Falins were ridingsilently, but as the first two passed under him, one said:
"I'd like to know who the hell warned 'em!"
"Whar's the Red Fox?" was the significant answer.
The boy's heart leaped. There had been deviltry abroad, but his kinsmenhad escaped. No one uttered a word as they rode two by two, under him,but one voice came back to him as they turned the point.
"I wonder if the other boys ketched young Dave?" He could not catch theanswer to that--only the oath that was in it, and when the sound of thehorses' hoofs died away, he turned over on his back and stared up at thesky. Some trouble had come and through his own caution, and the mercyof Providence that had kept him away from the Gap, he had had his escapefrom death that day. He would tempt that Providence no more, even byclimbing back to his horse in the waning light, and it was not untildusk had fallen that he was leading the beast down the spur and into aravine that sank to the road. There he waited an hour, and when anotherhorseman passed he still waited a while. Cautiously then, with earsalert, eyes straining through the darkness and Winchester ready, he wentdown the road at a slow walk. There was a light in the first house, butthe front door was closed and the road was deep with sand, as he knew;so he passed noiselessly. At the second house, light streamed throughthe open door; he could hear talking on the porch and he halted. Hecould neither cross the river nor get around the house by the rear--theridge was too steep--so he drew off into the bushes, where he had towait another hour before the talking ceased. There was only one morehouse now between him and the mouth of the creek, where he would besafe, and he made up his mind to dash by it. That house, too, waslighted and the sound of fiddling struck his ears. He would give them asurprise; so he gathered his reins and Winchester in his left hand, drewhis revolver with his right, and within thirty yards started his horseinto a run, yelling like an Indian and firing his pistol in the air.As he swept by, two or three figures dashed pell-mell indoors, and heshouted derisively:
"Run, damn ye, run!" They were running for their guns, he knew, butthe taunt would hurt and he was pleased. As he swept by the edge of acornfield, there was a flash of light from the base of a cliff straightacross, and a bullet sang over him, then another and another, but hesped on, cursing and yelling and shooting his own Winchester up in theair--all harmless, useless, but just to hurl defiance and taunt themwith his safety. His father's house was not far away, there was no soundof pursuit, and when he reached the river he drew down to a walk andstopped short in a shadow. Something had clicked in the bushes above himand he bent over his saddle and lay close to his horse's neck. The moonwas rising behind him and its light was creeping toward him through thebushes. In a moment he would be full in its yellow light, and he wasslipping from his horse to dart aside into the bushes, when a voiceahead of him called sharply:
"That you, Dave?"
It was his father, and the boy's answer was a loud laugh. Several menstepped from the bushes--they had heard firing and, fearing that youngDave was the cause of it, they had run to his help.
"What the hell you mean, boy, kickin' up such a racket?"
"Oh, I knowed somethin'd happened an' I wanted to skeer 'em a leetle."
"Yes, an' you never thought o' the trouble you might be causin' us."
"Don't you bother about me. I can take keer o' myself."
Old Dave Tolliver grunted--though at heart he was deeply pleased.
"Well, you come on home!"
All went silently--the boy getting meagre monosyllabic answers to hiseager questions but, by the time they reached home, he had gathered thestory of what had happened in town that day. There were more men inthe porch of the house and all were armed. The women of the house movedabout noiselessly and with drawn faces. There were no lights lit, andnobody stood long even in the light of the fire where he could be seenthrough a window; and doors were opened and passed through quickly. TheFalins had opened the feud that day, for the boy's foster-uncle, BadRufe Tolliver, contrary to the terms of the last truce, had come homefrom the West, and one of his kinsmen had been wounded. The boy toldwhat he had heard while he lay over the road along which some of hisenemies had passed and his father nodded. The Falins had learned in someway that the lad was going to the Gap that day and had sent men afterhim. Who was the spy?
"You TOLD me you was a-goin' to the Gap," said old Dave. "Whar was ye?"
"I didn't git th
at far," said the boy.
The old man and Loretta, young Dave's sister, laughed, and quiet smilespassed between the others.
"Well, you'd better be keerful 'bout gittin' even as far as you didgit--wharever that was--from now on."
"I ain't afeered," the boy said sullenly, and he turned into thekitchen. Still sullen, he ate his supper in silence and his mother askedhim no questions. He was worried that Bad Rufe had come back to themountains, for Rufe was always teasing June and there was somethingin his bold, black eyes that made the lad furious, even when thefoster-uncle was looking at Loretta or the little girl in LonesomeCove. And yet that was nothing to his new trouble, for his mind hungpersistently to the stranger and to the way June had behaved in thecabin in Lonesome Cove. Before he went to bed, he slipped out to theold well behind the house and sat on the water-trough in gloomy unrest,looking now and then at the stars that hung over the Cove and over theGap beyond, where the stranger was bound. It would have pleased hima good deal could he have known that the stranger was pushing his bigblack horse on his way, under those stars, toward the outer world.