Chapter III (1)

After a few moments of vexed cogitation Aaron broke the silence, keeping, however, a politic curb on his speech. “’Pears ter me, John, ez how mebbe ’twould hev done better ef ye hedn’t said that thar ez ye spoke ’bout’n the church-house.”

“Hold yer jaw!” returned the Panther, fiercely. “Who larned ye ter jedge o’ my words? An’ it don’t make no differ nohow. I done tole him nuthin’ ’bout’n the church-house ez the whole Ridge won’t say arterward, any way ez ye kin fix it.”

If Mark Yates had found himself suddenly in close proximity to a real panther he could hardly have felt more uncomfortable than these half-covert suggestions rendered him. He shrank from dwelling upon what they seemed to portend, and he was anxious to hear no more. The recollection of sundry maternal warnings concerning the evils, moral and temporal, incident upon keeping bad company, came on him with a crushing weight, and transformed the aspect of the fascinating still-house into a close resemblance to another locality of worm and fire, to which the baffled Carter had referred. He was desirous of going, but feared that so early a departure just at this critical juncture might be interpreted by his entertainers as a sign of distrust and a disposition to stand aloof when they were deserted by their other friends. And yet he knew, as well as if they had told him, that his arrival had interrupted some important discussion of the plot they were laying, and they only waited his exit to renew their debate.

While these antagonistic emotions swayed him, he sat with the others in meditative silence, gazing blankly at the pleasing rotundity of the dense shadow which he knew was the “copper,” and listening to the frantic dance and roistering melody of its bubbling, boiling, surging contents, to the monotonous trickling of the liquor falling from the worm, to the gentle cooing of the rill of clear spring water. The idea of pleasure suggested by the very sight of the place had given way as more serious thoughts and fears crowded in, and his boyish liking for these men who possessed that deadly fascination for youth and inexperience,--the reputation of being wild,--was fast changing to aversion. He still entertained a strong sympathy for those fierce qualities which gave so vivid an interest to the stirring accounts of struggles with wolves and wild cats, bears and panthers, and to the histories of bitter feuds between human enemies, in the bloody sequel of which, however, the brutality of the deed often vied with its prowess; but this fashion of squaring off, metaphorically speaking, at the preacher, and the strange insinuations of sacrilegious injury to the church--the beloved church, so hardly won from the wilderness, representing the rich gifts of the very poor, their time, their labor, their love, their prayers--this struck every chord of conservatism in his nature.

There had never before been a church building in this vicinity; “summer preachin’” under the forest oaks had sufficed, with sometimes at long intervals a funeral sermon at the house of a neighbor. But in response to that strenuous cry, “Be up and doing,” and in acquiescence with the sharp admonition that religion does not consist in singing sleepy hymns in a comfortable chimney-corner, the whole countryside had roused itself to the privilege of the work nearest its hand. Practical Christianity first developed at the saw-mill. The great logs, seasoned lumber from the forest, were offered as a sacrifice to the glory of God, and as the word went around, Mark Yates, always alert, was among the first of the groups that came and stood and watched the gleaming steel striking into the fine white fibers of the wood--the beginnings of the “church-house”--while the dark, clear water reflected the great beams and roof of the mill, and the sibilant whizzing of the simple machinery seemed, with the knowledge of the consecrated nature of its work, an harmonious undertone to the hymning of the pines, and the gladsome rushing of the winds, and the subdued ecstasies of all the lapsing currents of the stream.

Mark had looked on drearily. His spirit, awakened by the clarion call of duty, fretted and revolted at the restraints of his lack of means. He could do naught. It was the privilege of others to prepare the lumber. It seemed that even inanimate nature had its share in building the church--the earth in its rich nurture that had given strength to the great trees; the seasons that had filled the veins of each with the rich wine of the sap, the bourgeoning impulse of its leafage and the ripeness of its fine fruitions; the rainfall and sunshine that had fed and fostered and cherished it--only he had naught to give but the idle gaze of wistful eyes.

The miller, a taciturn man, was very well aware that he had sawed the lumber. He said naught when the work was ended, but surveyed the great fragrant piles of cedar and walnut and maple and cherry and oak, the building woods of these richly endowed mountains, with a silence so significant that it spoke louder than words. It said that his work was finished, and who was there who would do as much or more? So loud, so forceful, so eloquent was this challenge that the next day several teamsters came and stood dismally each holding his chin-whiskers in his hand and contemplated the field of practical Christianity.

“It’ll be a powerful job ter hev ter haul all that thar lumber, sure!” said one reluctant wight, in disconsolate survey, his mouth slightly ajar, his hand ruefully rubbing his cheek.

“It war a powerful job ter saw it,” said the miller.

The jaws of the teamster closed with a snap. He had nothing more to say. He, too, was roused to the gospel of action. The miller should not saw more than he would haul. Thus it was that the next day found him with his strong mule team at sunrise, the first great lengths of the boles on the wagon, making his way along the steep ascents of Jolton’s Ridge.

And again Mark looked on drearily. He could do naught--he and Cockleburr. Cockleburr was hardly broken to the saddle, wild and restive, and it would have been the sacrifice of a day’s labor, even if the offer of such unlikely aid would have been accepted, to hitch the colt in for the hauling of this heavy lumber, such earnest, hearty work as the big mules were straining every muscle to accomplish. He was too poor, he felt, with a bitter sigh. He could do naught--naught. True, he armed himself with an axe, and went ahead of the toiling mules, now and then cutting down a sapling which grew in the midst of the unfrequented bridle-path, and which was not quite slight enough to bend beneath the wagon as did most of such obstructions, or widening the way where the clustering underbrush threatened a stoppage of the team. So much more, under the coercion of the little preacher’s sermon, he had wanted to do, that he hardly cared for the “Holped me powerful, Mark,” of the teamster’s thanks, when they had reached the destination of the lumber--the secluded nook where the little mountain graveyard nestled in the heart of the great range--the site chosen by the neighbors for the erection of their beloved church. Beloved before one of the bowlders that made the piers of its foundation was selected from the rocky hillside, where the currents of forgotten, long ebbed-away torrents had stranded them, where the detrition of the rain and the sand had molded them, the powers of nature thus beginning the building of the church-house to the glory of God in times so long gone past that man has no record of its spaces. Beloved before one of the great logs was lifted upon another to build the walls, within which should be crystallized the worship of congregations, the prayers of the righteous that should avail much. Beloved before one of the puncheons was laid of the floor, consecrated with the hope that many a sinner should tread them on the way to salvation. Beloved with the pride of a worthy achievement and the satisfaction of a cherished duty honestly discharged, before a blow was struck or a nail driven.

And here Mark, earnestly seeking his opportunity to share the work, found a field of usefulness. No great skill, one may be sure, prevailed in the methods of the humble handicraftsmen of the gorge--all untrained to the mechanical arts, and each a jack-of-all-trades, as occasion in his lowly needs or opportunity might offer. Mark had a sort of knack of deftness, a quick and exact eye, both suppleness and strength, and thus he was something more than a mere botch of an amateur workman. His enthusiasm blossomed forth. He, too, might serve the great cause. He, too, might give of the work of his hands.

At it he was, hammer and nails, from morning till night, and he rejoiced when the others living at a distance and having their firesides to provide for, left him here late alone building the temple of God in the wilderness. He would ever and anon glance out through the interstices of the unchinked log walls at the great sun going down over the valley behind the purple mountains of the west, and lending him an extra beam to drive another nail, after one might think it time to be dark and still; and vouchsafing yet another ray, as though loath to quit this work, lingering at the threshold of the day, although the splendors of another hemisphere awaited its illumination, and many a rich Southern scene that the sun is wont to love; and still sending a gleam, high aslant, that one more nail might be driven; and at last the red suffusion of certain farewell, wherein was enough light for the young man to catch up his tools and set out swiftly and joyously down the side of Jolton’s Ridge.

And always was he first at the tryst to greet the sun--standing in the unfinished building, his hammer in his hand, his hat on the back of his head, and looking through the gap of the range to watch the great disk when it would rise over the Carolina Mountains, with its broad, prophetic effulgence falling over the lowly mounds in the graveyard, as if one might say, “Behold! the dispersal of night, the return of light, the earnest of the Day to come.” Long before the other laborers on the church reached the building Mark had listened to the echoes keeping tally with the strokes of his hammer, had heard the earth shake, the clangor and clash of the distant train on the rails, the shriek of the whistle as the locomotive rushed upon the bridge above that deep chasm, the sinister hollow roar of the wheels, and the deep, thunderous reverberation of the rocks. Thus he noted the passage of the early trains--the freight first, and after an hour’s interval the passenger train; then a silence, as if primeval, would settle down upon the world, broken only by the strokes of the hammer, until at last some neighbor, with his own tools in hand, would come in.

None of them realized how much of the work Mark had done. Each looked only at the result, knowing it to be the aggregated industry and leisure of the neighbors, laboring as best they might and as opportunity offered. This was no hindrance to Mark’s satisfaction. He had wanted to help, not to make a parade of his help, or to have what he had done appreciated. He thought the little preacher, the “skimpy saint,” as his unfriends called him, had a definite idea of what he had done. In the stress of this man’s lofty ideals he could compromise with little that failed to reach them. He was forever stretching onward and upward. But Mark noted a kindling in his intent eye one day, while “the chinking” was being put in, the small diagonal slats between the logs of the wall on which the clay of the “daubing” was to be plastered. “Did you do all this side?” he had asked.

As Mark answered “Yes,” he felt his heart swell with responsive pride to win even this infrequent look of approval, and he went on to claim more. “Don’t tell nobody,” he said, glancing up from his kneeling posture by the side of the wall. “But I done that corner, too, over thar by the door. Old Joel Ruggles done it fust, but the old man’s eyesight’s dim, an’ his hand onstiddy, an’ ’twar all crooked an’ onreg’lar, so _unbeknown_ ter _him_ I kem hyar early one day an’ did it over,--though he don’t know it,--so ez ’twould be ekal--all of a piece.”

The “skimpy saint” now hardly seemed to care to glance at the work. He still stood with his hand on the boy’s shoulder, looking down at him with eyes in which Mark perceived new meanings.

“You can sense, then, the worth of hevin’ all things of a piece with the best. See ter it, Mark, that ye keep yer life all of a piece with this good work--with the best that’s in ye.”

So Mark understood. But nowadays he hardly felt all of a piece with the good work he had done on the church walls, against so many discouragements, laboring early and late, seeking earnestly some means that might be within his limited power. Oftentimes, after the church was finished, he went and stood and gazed at it, realizing its stanch validity, without shortcomings, without distortions--all substantial and regular, with none of the discrepancies and inadequacies of his moral structure.

While silently and meditatively recalling all these facts as he sat this night of early spring among the widely unrelated surroundings of the still, the shadowy group of moonshiners about him, Mark Yates looked hard at Panther Brice’s sharp features, showing, in the thread of white light from the closed door of the furnace, with startling distinctness against the darkness, like some curiously carved cameo. He never understood the rush of feeling that constrained him to speak, and afterward, when he thought of it, his temerity surprised him.

“Painter,” he said, “I hev been a-comin’ hyar ter this hyar still-house along of ye an’ the t’other boys right smart time, an’ I hev been mighty well treated; an’ I ain’t one o’ the sort ez kin buy much liquor, nuther. I hev hed a many a free drink hyar, an’ a sight o’ laughin’ an’ talkin’ along o’ ye an’ the t’other boys. An’ ’twarn’t the whisky as brung me, nuther--’twar mos’ly ter hear them yarns o’ yourn ’bout bar-huntin’ an’ sech, fur ye air the talkin’est one o’ the lot. But ef ye air a-goin’ ter take it out’n the preacher or the church-house--I hain’t got the rights o’ what ye air a-layin’ off ter do, an’ I don’t want ter know, nuther--jes’ ’kase ye an’ the t’other boys war turned out’n the church, I hev hed my fill o’ associatin’ with ye. I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev nuthin’ ter do with men-folks ez would fight a pore critter of a preacher, what hev got ez much right ter jow ez ef he war a woman. Sass is what they both war made fur, it ’pears like ter me, an’ ’twar toler’ble spunky sure in him ter speak his mind so plain, knowing what a fighter ye be an’ the t’others, too--no other men hev got the name of sech tremenjious fighters! I allow he seen his jewty plain in what he done, seem’ he tuk sech risks. An’ ef ye air a-goin’ ter raise a ’sturbance ter the church-house, or whatever ye air a-layin’ off ter do ter _it_, I ain’t a-goin’ ter hev no hand-shakin’ with sech folks. Payin’ ’em back ain’t a-goin’ ter patch up the matter nohow--ye’re done turned out the church now, an’ that ain’t a-goin’ ter put ye back. It ’pears mighty cur’ous ter me ez a man ez kin claw with a bar same ez with a little purp, kin git so riled ez he’ll take up with fightin’ of that thar pore little preacher what ain’t got a ounce o’ muscle ter save his life. I wouldn’t mind his jowin’ at me no more’n I mind my mother’s jowin’--an’ she air always at it.”

There was a silence for a few moments--only the sound of the trickling liquor from the worm and the whir inside the still. That white face, illumined by the thread of light, was so motionless that it might have seemed petrified but for the intense green glare of the widely open eyes. The lips suddenly parted in a snarl, showing two rows of sharp white teeth, and the high shrill voice struck the air with a shiver.

“Ye’re the cussedest purp in this hyar gorge!” the Panther exclaimed. “Ye sit thar an’ tell how well ye hev been treated hyar ter this hyar still-house, an’ then let on ez how ye think ye’ re too good ter come a-visitin’ hyar any more. Ye air like all the rest o’ these folks round hyar--ye take all ye wants, an’ then the fust breath of a word agin a body ye turns agin ’em too. Ye kin clar out’n this. Ye ain’t wanted hyar. I ain’t a-goin’ ter let none o’ yer church brethren nor thar fr’en’s nuther--fur ye ain’t even a perfessin’ member--come five mile a-nigh hyar arter this. We air a-goin’ ter turn ’em out’n the still-house, an’ that thar will hurt ’em worse’n turnin’ ’em out’n the church. They go an’ turn _us_ out’n the church fur runnin’ of a still, an’ before the Lord, we kin hardly drive ’em away from hyar along of we-uns. I’m a-goin’ ter git the skin o’ one o’ these hyar brethren an’ nail it ter the door like a mink’s skin ter a hen house, an’ I’ll see ef that can’t skeer ’em off. An’ ef ye don’t git out’n hyar mighty quick now, Mark Yates, like ez not the fust skin nailed ter the door will be that thar big, loose hide o’ yourn.”

“I ain’t the man ter stay when I’m axed ter go,” said young Yates, rising, “an’ so I’ll light out right now. But what I war a-aimin’ ter tell ye, Painter, war ez how I hev sot too much store by ye and the t’other boys ter want ter see ye a-cuttin’ cur’ous shines ’bout the church-house an’ that leetle mite of a preacher an’ sech.”

Once more that mental reservation touching “the strength of righteousness” recurred to him. Was the little preacher altogether a weakling? His courage was a stanch endowment. He had been warned of the gathering antagonisms a hundred times, and by friend as well as foe. But obstinately, resolutely, he kept on the path he had chosen to tread.

“An’ I’ll let ye know ez I kin be frien’ly with a man ez fights bars an’ fightin’-men,” Mark resumed, “but I kin abide no man ez gits ter huntin’ down little scraps of preachers what hain’t got no call ter fight, nor no muscle nuther.”

“Ye’ll go away ’thout that thar hide o’ yourn ef ye don’t put out mighty quick now,” said the Panther, his sinister green eyes ablaze and his supple body trembling with eagerness to leap upon his foe.

“I ain’t afeard of ye, Painter,” said Mark, with his impenetrable calm, “but this hyar still-house air yourn, an’ I s’pose ez ye hev got a right ter say who air ter stay an’ who air ter go.”

He went out into the chill night; the moon had sunk; the fleet of clouds rode at anchor above the eastern horizon, and save the throbbing of the constellations the sky was still. But the strong, cold wind continued to circle close about the surface of the earth; the pines were swaying to and fro, and moaning as they swayed; the bare branches of the other trees crashed fitfully together. As Yates mounted his horse he heard Aaron say, in a fretful tone: “In the name of God, John, what ails ye to-night? Ye tuk Mark an’ Mose up ez sharp! Ye air ez powerful bouncin’ ez ef ye hed been drunk fur a week.”

The keen voice of the Panther rang out shrilly, and Mark gave his horse whip and heel to be beyond the sound of it. He wanted to hear no more--not even the tones--least of all the words, and words spoken in confidence in their own circle when they believed themselves unheard. He feared there was some wicked conspiracy among them; he could not imagine what it might be, but since he could do naught to hinder he earnestly desired that he might not become accidentally cognizant of it, and in so far accessory to it. He therefore sought to give them some intimation of his lingering presence, for Cockleburr had been frisky and restive, and difficult to mount; he accordingly began to sing aloud:--

“You hear that hawn? Yo he! Yo ho!”

But what was this? Instead of his customary hearty whoop, the tones rang out all forlornly, a wheeze and a quaver, and finally broke and sunk into silence. But the voices in conversation within had suddenly ceased. The musically disposed of the Brice brothers himself was singing, as if quite casually:--

“He wept full sore fur his ‘dear friend Jack,’
An’ how could I know he meant ‘Apple-Jack’!”

Mark was aware that they had taken his warning, although with no appreciation of his motive in giving it. He could imagine the contemptuous anger against him with which they looked significantly at one another as they sat in the dusky shadows around the still, and he knew that his sudden outburst into song must seem to them bravado--an intimation that he did not care for having been summarily ejected from the still-house, when in reality, only the recollection of it sent the color flaming to his cheeks and the tears to his eyes. This was not for the mere matter of pride, either; but for disappointment, for fled illusions, for the realization that he had placed a false valuation on these men. He had been flattered that they had cared for his friendship, and reciprocally had valued him more than others; they had relished and invited his companionship; they had treated him almost as one of themselves. And although he saw much gambling and drinking, sometimes resulting in brawls and furious fights, against which his moral sense revolted, he felt sure that their dissipation was transitory; they would all straighten out and settle down--when they themselves were older. In truth, he could hardly have conceived that this manifestation of to-night was the true identity of the friends to whom he had attached himself--that their souls, their hearts, their minds, were of a piece with the texture of their daily lives, as sooner or later the event would show. In the disuse of good impulses and honest qualities they grow lax and weak. They are the moral muscles of the spiritual being, and, like the muscles of the physical body, they must needs be exercised and trained to serve the best interests of the soul.

“Yo-he! Yo-ho!” sang poor Mark, as he plunged into the forest, keeping in the wood trail, called courteously a road, partly by the memory of his horse, and partly by the keen sight of his gray eyes. He lapsed presently into silence, for he had no heart for singing, and he jogged on dispirited, gloomy, reflective, through the rugged ways of the wilderness. It was fully two hours before he emerged into the more open country about his mother’s house; as he reached the bank of the stream he glanced up, toward the bridge--the faintest suggestion of two parallel lines across the instarred sky. A great light flashed through the heavens, followed by a comet-like sweep of fiery sparks.

“That thar air the ’leven o’clock train, I reckon,” said Mark, making his cautious way among the bowlders and fragments of fallen rock to the door of the house. The horse plucked up spirit to neigh gleefully at the sight of his shanty and the thought of his supper. The sound brought Mrs. Yates to the window of the cabin.

“Air that ye a-comin’, Mark?” she asked.

“It air me an’ Cockleburr,” replied her son, with an effort to be cheerful too, and to cast away gloomy thoughts in the relief of being once more at home.

“Air ye ez drunk ez or’nary?” demanded his mother.

This was a damper. “I ain’t drunk nohow in the worl’,” said Mark, sullenly.

“Whyn’t ye stay ter the still, then, till ye war soaked?” she gibed at him.

Mark dismounted in silence; there was no saddle to be unbuckled, and Cockleburr walked at once into the little shed to munch upon a handful of hay and to dream of corn.

His master, entering the house, was saluted by the inquiry, “War Painter Brice ez drunk ez common?”

“No, he warn’t drunk nuther.”

“Hev the still gone dry?” asked Mrs. Yates, affecting an air of deep interest.

“Not ez I knows on, it hain’t,” said Mark.

“Thar must be suthin’ mighty comical a-goin on ef ye nor Painter nare one air drunk. Is Aaron drunk, then? Nor Pete? nor Joe? Waal, this air powerful disapp’intin’.” And she took off her spectacles, wiped them on her apron, and shook her head slowly to and fro in solemn mockery.

“Waal,” she continued, with a more natural appearance of interest, “what war they all a-talkin’ ’bout ter-night?”

Mark sat down, and looked gloomily at the dying embers in the deep chimney-place for a moment, then he replied, evasively, “Nuthin’ much.”

“That’s what ye always say! Ef I go from hyar ter the spring yander, I kin come back with more to tell than yer kin gether up in a day an’ a night at the still. It ’pears like ter me men war mos’ly made jes’ ter eat an’ drink, an’ thar tongues war gin ’em for no use but jes’ ter keep ’em from feelin’ lonesome like.”

Mark did not respond to this sarcasm. His mother presently knelt down on the rough stones of the hearth, and began to rake the coals together, covering them with ashes, preliminary to retiring for the night. She glanced up into his face as she completed the work; then, with a gleam of fun in her eyes, she said:

“Ye look like ye’re studyin’ powerful hard, Mark. Mebbe ye air a-cornsiderin’ ’bout gittin’ married. It’s ’bout time ez ye war a-gittin’ another woman hyar ter work fur ye, ’kase I’m toler’ble old, an’ can’t live forever mo’, an’ some day ye’ll find yerself desolated.”

“I ain’t a-studyin’ no more ’bout a-gettin’ married nor ye air yerself,” Mark retorted, petulantly.

“Ye ain’t a-studyin’ much ’bout it, then,” said his mother. “The Bible looks like it air a-pityin’ of widders mightily, but it ’pears ter me that the worst of thar troubles is over.”

Then ensued a long silence. “Thar’s one thing to be sartain,” said Mark, suddenly. “I ain’t never a-goin ter that thar still no more.”

“I hev hearn ye say that afore,” remarked Mrs. Yates, dryly. “An’ thar never come a day when yer father war alive ez he didn’t say that very word--nor a day as that word warn’t bruken.”

These amenities were at length sunk in sleep, and the little log hut hung upon its precarious perch on the slope beneath the huge cliff all quiet and lonely. The great gorge seemed a channel hewn for the winds; they filled it with surging waves of sound, and the vast stretches of woods were in wild commotion. The Argus-eyed sky still held its steadfast watch, but an impenetrable black mask clung to the earth. At long intervals there arose from out the forest the cry of a wild beast--the anguish of the prey or the savage joy of the captor--and then for a time no sound save the monotonous ebb and flow of the sea of winds. Suddenly, a shrill whistle awoke the echoes, the meteor-like train sweeping across the sky wavered, faltered, and paused on the verge of the crag. Then the darkness was instarred with faint, swinging points of light, and there floated down upon the wind the sound of eager, excited voices.

“Ef them thar cars war ter drap off’n that thar bluff,” said the anxious Mrs. Yates, as she and her son, aroused by the unwonted noise, came out of the hut, and gazed upward at the great white glare of the headlight, “they’d ruin the turnip patch, worl’ without e-end.”

“Nothing whatever is the matter,” said the Pullman conductor, cheerily, to his passengers, as he re-entered his coach. “Only a little church on fire just beyond the curve of the road; the engineer couldn’t determine at first whether it was a fire built on the track or on the hillside.”

The curtains of the berths were dropped, sundry inquiring windows were closed, the travelers lay back on their hard pillows, the faint swinging points of light moved upward as the men with the lanterns sprang upon the platforms, the train moved slowly and majestically across the bridge, and presently it was whizzing past the little church, where the flames had licked up benches and pulpit and floor, and were beginning to stream through door and window, and far above the roof.

The miniature world went clanging along its way, careless of what it left behind, and the turnip patch was saved.

The wonderful phenomenon of the stoppage of the train had aroused the whole countryside, and when it had passed, the strange lurid glare high on the slope of the mountain attracted attention. There was an instant rush of the scattered settlers toward the doomed building. A narrow, circuitous path led them up the steep ascent among gigantic rocks and dense pine thickets; the roaring of the tumultuous wind drowned all other sounds, and they soon ceased the endeavor to speak to one another as they went, and canvass their suspicions and indignation. Turning a sharp curve, the foremost of the party came abruptly upon a man descending.

He had felt secure in the dead hour of night and the thick darkness, and the distance had precluded him from being warned by the stoppage of the train. He stood in motionless indecision for an instant, until Moses Carter, who was a little in advance of the others, made an effort to seize him, exclaiming, “This fire ez ye hev kindled, Painter Brice, will burn ye in hell forever!” He spoke at a venture, not recognizing the dark shadow, but there was no mistaking the supple spring with which the man threw himself upon his enemy, nor the keen ferocity that wielded the sharp knife. Hearing, however, in the ebb of the wind, voices approaching from the hill below, and realizing the number of his antagonists, the Panther tore himself loose, and running in the dark with the unerring instinct and precision of the wild beast that he was, he sped up the precipitous slope, and was lost in the gloomy night.

“Gin us the slip!” exclaimed Joel Ruggles, in grievous disappointment, as he came up breathless. “A cussed painter if ever thar war one.”

“Mebbe he won’t go fur,” said Moses Carter. “He done cut my arm a-nigh in two, but thar air suthin’ adrippin’ off ’n my knife what I feels in my bones is that thar Painter’s blood. An’ I ain’t a-goin ter stop till he air cotched, dead or alive. He mought hev gone down yander ter the Widder Yates’s house, ez him an’ Mark air thicker’n thieves. Come ter think on’t,” he continued, “Mark war a-settin’ with this hyar very Painter Brice an’ the t’others yander ter the still-house nigh ’pon eight o’clock ter-night, an’ like ez not he holped Painter an’ the t’others ter fire the church.” For there was a strong impression prevalent that wherever Panther Brice was, his satellite brothers were not far off. Nothing, however, was seen of them on the way, and the pursuers burst in upon the frightened widow and her son with little ceremony. Her assertion that Mark had not left home since the eleven o’clock train passed was disregarded, and they dragged the young fellow out to the door, demanding to know where were the Brices.

“I hain’t seen none of ’em since I lef’ the still ’bout’n eight or nine o’clock ter-night,” Mark protested.

“Ef the truth war knowed,” said Moses Carter, jeeringly, “ye never lef’ the still till they did. War it ye ez holped ’em ter fire the church?”

“I never knowed the church war burnin’ till ye kem hyar,” replied young Yates. He was almost overpowered by a sickening realization of the meaning of those covert insinuations which he had heard at the still; and he remembered that the Panther’s assertion that the church was safer with the Brices in it than out of it, was made while he sat among the brothers in Moses Carter’s presence. He saw the justice of the strong suspicion.

“You know, though, whar Painter Brice is now--don’t ye?” asked Carter.

A faint streak of dawn was athwart the eastern clouds, and as the young fellow turned his bewildered eyes upward to it the blood stood still in his veins. Upon one of the parallel lines of the bridge was the figure of man, belittled by the distance, and indistinctly defined against the mottling sky; but the far-seeing gray eyes detected in a certain untrammeled ease, as it moved lightly from one of the ties to another, the Panther’s free motion.

Mark Yates hesitated. He cherished an almost superstitious reverence for the church which Panther Brice had desecrated and destroyed, and he feared the consequences of refusing to give the information demanded of him. A denial of the knowledge he did not for a moment contemplate. And struggling in his mind against these considerations was a recollection of the hospitality of the Brices, and of the ill-starred friendship that had taken root and grown and flourished at the still.

This hesitation was observed; there were significant looks interchanged among the men, and the question was repeated, “Whar’s Painter Brice?”

The decision of the problems that agitated the mind of Mark Yates was not left to him. He saw the figure on the bridge suddenly turn, then start eagerly forward. A heavy freight train, almost noiseless in the wild whirl of the wind, had approached very near without being perceived by Panther Brice. He could not retrace his way before it would be upon him--to cross the bridge in advance of it was his only hope. He was dizzy from the loss of blood and the great height, and the wind was blowing between the cliffs in a strong, unobstructed current. As he ran rapidly onward, the first faint gleam of the approaching headlight touched the bridge--a furious warning shriek of the whistle mingled with a wild human cry, and the Panther, missing his footing, fell like a thunderbolt into the depths of the black waters below.

There was a revulsion of feeling, very characteristic of inconstant humanity, in the little group on the slope below the crag. Before Mark Yates’s frantic exclamation, “Thar goes Painter Brice, an’ he’ll be drownded sure!” had fairly died upon the air, half a dozen men were struggling in the dark, cold water of the swift stream in the vain attempt to rescue their hunted foe. Long after they had given up the forlorn hope of saving his life, the morning sun for hours watched them patrolling the banks for the recovery of the body.

“Ef we could haul that pore critter out somehow ’nother,” said Moses Carter, his arm still dripping from the sharp strokes of the Panther’s knife, “an’ git the preacher ter bury him somewhar under the pines like he war a Christian, I could rest more sati’fied in my mind.”

The mountain stream never gave him up.

This event had a radical influence upon the future of Mark Yates. Never again did he belittle the possible impetus given the moral nature by those more trifling wrongs that always result in an increased momentum toward crime. He was the first to discover more of what Painter Brice had really intended,--had attempted,--than was immediately apparent to the countryside in general. A fragment of the door lay unburned among the charred remains of the little church in the wilderness--a fragment that carried the lock, the key. Mark’s sharp eyes fixed upon a salient point as he stood among the group that had congregated there in the sad light of the awakening day. The key was on the outside of the door, and it had been turned! The Panther had doubtless been actuated by revenge, and perhaps, had been influenced by the fear that information of the illicit distilling would be given by the parson to the revenue authorities, as a means of breaking up an element so inimical to the true progress of religion on the ridge--its denizens hitherto availing themselves of the convenience of the still to assuage any pricks of conscience they may have had in the matter, and also fearing the swift and terrible fate that inevitably overtook the informer. At all events, it was evident, that having reason to believe the minister was still within, Painter Brice had noiselessly locked the door that his unsuspecting enemy might also perish in the flames. For in the primitive fashioning of the building there was no aperture for light and air except the door--no window, save a small, glassless square above the pulpit which, in the good time coming, the congregation had hoped to glaze, to receive therefrom more light on salvation. It was so small, so high, that perhaps no other man could have slipped through it, save indeed the slim little “skimpy saint,” and it was thus that he had escaped.

No vengeance followed the Panther’s brothers. “They hed ter do jes’ what Painter tole ’em, ye see,” was the explanation of this leniency. And Mark Yates was always afterward described as “a peart smart boy, ef he hedn’t holped the Brices ter fire the church-house.” The still continued to be run according to the old regulations, except there was no whisky sold to the church brethren. “That bein’ the word ez John left behind him,” said Aaron. The laws of few departed rulers are observed with the rigor which the Brices accorded to the Panther’s word. The locality came to be generally avoided, and no one cared to linger there after dark, save the three Brices, who sat as of old, in the black shadows about the still.

Whenever in the night-wrapped gorge a shrill cry is heard from the woods, or the wind strikes a piercing key, or the train thunders over the bridge with a wild shriek of whistles, and the rocks repeat it with a human tone in the echo, the simple foresters are wont to turn a trifle pale and to bar up the doors, declaring that the sound “air Painter Brice a-callin’ fur his brothers.”

THE EXPLOIT OF CHOOLAH, THE CHICKASAW

The victorious campaign which Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant conducted in the Cherokee country in the summer of 1761, and which redounded so greatly to the credit of the courage and endurance of the expeditionary force, British regulars and South Carolina provincials, is like many other human events in presenting to the casual observation only an harmonious whole, while it is made up of a thousand little jagged bits of varied incident inconsistent and irregular, and with no single element in common but the attraction of cohesion to amalgamate the mosaic.

Perhaps no two men in the command saw alike the peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains hovering elusively on the horizon, now purple and ominous among the storm clouds, for the rain fell persistently; now distant, blue, transiently sun-flooded, and with the prismatic splendors of the rainbow spanning in successive arches the abysses from dome to dome, and growing ever fainter and fainter in duplication far away. Perhaps no two men revived similar impressions as they recognized various localities from the South Carolina coast to the Indian town of Etchoee, near the Little Tennessee River, for many of them had traversed hundreds of miles of these wild fastnesses the previous year, when Colonel Montgomery, now returned to England, had led an aggressive expedition against the Cherokees. Certain it is, the accounts of their experiences are many and varied--only in all the character of their terrible enemy, the powerful and warlike Cherokee, stands out as incontrovertible as eternity, as immutable as Fate. Hence there were no stragglers, no deserters. In a compact body, while the rain fell, and the torrents swelled the streams till the fords became almost impracticable, the little army, as with a single impulse, pressed stanchly on through the mist-filled, sodden avenues of the primeval woods. To be out of sight for an instant of that long, thin column of soldiers risked far more than death--capture, torture, the flame, the knife, all the extremity of anguish that the ingenuity of savage malice could devise and human flesh endure. But although day by day the thunder cracked among the branches of the dripping trees and reverberated from the rocks of the craggy defiles, and keen swift blades of lightning at short intervals thrust through the lowering clouds, almost always near sunset long level lines of burnished golden beams began to glance through the wild woodland ways; a mocking-bird would burst into song from out the dense coverts of the laurel on the slope of a mountain hard by; the sky would show blue overhead, and glimmer red through the low-hanging boughs toward the west; and the troops would pitch their tents under the restored peace of the elements and the placid white stars.

A jolly camp it must have been. Stories of it have come down to this day--of its songs, loud, hilarious, patriotic, doubtless rudely musical; of its wild pranks, of that boyish and jocose kind denominated by sober and unsympathetic elders, “horse-play”; of the intense delight experienced by the savage allies, the Chickasaws, who participated in the campaign, in witnessing the dances of the young Highlanders--how “their sprightly manner in this exercise,” and athletic grace appealed to the Indians; how the sound of the bag-pipes thrilled them; how they admired that ancient martial garb, the kilt and plaid.

No admiration, however extravagant of Scotch customs, character, or appearance, seemed excessive in the eyes of Lieutenant-Colonel James Grant, so readily did his haughty, patriotic pride acquiesce in it, and the Indian’s evident appreciation of the national superiority of the Scotch to all other races of men duly served to enhance his opinion of the mental acumen of the Chickasaws. This homage, however, failed to mollify or modify the estimate of the noble redman already formed by a certain subaltern, Lieutenant Ronald MacDonnell.

“The Lord made him an Indian--and an Indian he will remain,” he would remark sagely.

The policy of the British government to utilize in its armies the martial strength of semi-savage dependencies, elsewhere so conspicuously exploited, was never successful with these Indians save as the tribes might fight in predatory bands in their own wild way, although much effort was made looking toward regular enlistments. And, in fact, the futility of all endeavors to reduce the savage to a reasonable conformity to the militarism of the camp, to inculcate the details of the drill, a sense of the authority of officers, the obligations of out-posts, the heinousness of “running the guard,” the necessity of submitting to the prescribed punishments and penalties for disobedience of orders,--all rendered this ethnographic saw so marvelously apt, that it seemed endowed with more wisdom than Ronald MacDonnell was popularly supposed to possess. But such logic as he could muster operated within contracted limits. If the Lord had not fitted a man to be a soldier, why--there Ronald MacDonnell’s extremest flights of speculation paused.

In the scheme of his narrow-minded Cosmos the human creature was represented by two simple species: unimportant, unindividualized man in general, and that race of exalted beings known as soldiers. He was a good drill, and with the instinct of a born disciplinarian in his survey, he would often watch the Chickasaws with this question in his mind,--sometimes when they were on the march, and their endurance, their activity, the admirable proportions of their bodies, their free and vigorous gait were in evidence; sometimes in the swift efficiency of their scouting parties when their strategy and courage and wily caution were most marked; sometimes in the relaxations of the camp when their keen responsive interest in the quirks and quips of the soldier at play attested their mental receptivity and plastic impressibility. Their gayety seemed a docile, mundane, civilized sort of mirth when they would stand around in the ring with the other soldiers to watch the agile Highlanders in the inspiring martial posturing of the sword dance, with their fluttering kilts and glittering blades, their free gestures,their long, sinewy, bounding steps, as of creatures of no weight, while the bag-pipes skirled, and the great campfire flared, and the light and shadows fluctuated in the dense primeval woods, half revealing, half concealing the lines of tents, of picketed horses, of stacks of arms, of other flaring camp-fires--even the pastoral suggestion in the distance of the horned heads of the beef-herd. But whatever the place or scene, Ronald MacDonnell’s conclusion was essentially the same. “The Lord made him an Indian,” he would say, with an air of absolute finality.

He was a man of few words,--of few ideas; these were strictly military and of an appreciated value. He was considered a promising young officer, and was often detailed to important and hazardous duty. And if he had naught to say at mess, and seldom could perceive a joke unless of a phenomenal pertinence and brilliancy, broadly aflare so to speak under his nose, he was yet a boon companion, and could hold his own like a Scotchman when many a brighter man was under the table. He had a certain stanch, unquestioning sense of duty and loyalty, and manifested an unchangeable partisanship in his friendship, of a silent and undemonstrative order, that caused his somewhat exaggerated view of his own dignity to be respected, for it was intuitively felt that his personal antagonism would be of the same tenacious, unreasoning, requiting quality, and should not be needlessly roused. He was still very young, although he had seen much service. He was tall and stalwart; he had the large, raw-boned look which is usually considered characteristic of the Scotch build, and was of great muscular strength, but carrying not one ounce of superfluous flesh. Light-colored hair, almost flaxen, indeed, with a strong tendency to curl in the shorter locks that lay in tendrils on his forehead, clear, contemplative blue eyes, a fixed look of strength, of reserves of unfailing firmness about the well-cut lips, a good brick-red flush acquired from many and many a day of marching in the wind, and the rain, and the sun--this is the impression one may take from his portrait. He could be as noisy and boisterously gay as the other young officers, but somehow his hilarity was of a physical sort, as of the sheer joy of living, and moving, and being so strong. One might wonder what impressions he received in the long term of his service in Canada and the Colonies--these strange new lands so alien to all his earlier experience. One might doubt if he saw how fair of face was this most lovely of regions, the Cherokee country; if the primeval forests, the splendid tangles of blooming rhododendron, the crystal-clear, rock-bound rivers were asserted in his consciousness otherwise than as the technical “obstacle” for troops on the march. As to the imposing muster of limitless ranks of mountains surrounding the little army on every side, they did not remind him of the hills of Scotland, as the sheer sense of great heights and wild ravines and flashing cataracts suggested reminiscences to the others. “There is no gorse,” he remarked of these august ranges, with their rich growths of gigantic forest trees, as if from the beginning of the earliest eras of dry land,--and the mess called him “Gorse” until the incident was forgotten.

For the last three days the command, consisting of some twenty-six hundred men, had been advancing by forced marches, despite the deterrent weather. Setting out on the 7th of June from Fort Prince George, where the army had rested for ten days after the march of three hundred miles from Charlestown, Colonel Grant encountered a season of phenomenal rain-fall. Moreover, the lay of the land,--long stretches of broken, rocky country, gashed by steep ravines and intersected by foaming, swollen torrents, deep and dangerous to ford, encompassed on every hand by rugged heights and narrow, intricate, winding valleys, affording always but a restricted passage,--offered peculiar advantages for attack. Colonel Grant, aware that these craggy defiles could be held against him even by an inferior force, that a smart demonstration on the flank would so separate the thin line of his troops that one division would hardly be available to come to the support of the other, that an engagement here and now would result in great loss of life, if not an actual and decisive repulse, was urging the march forward at the utmost speed possible to reach more practicable ground for an encounter, regardless how the pace might harass the men. But they were responding gallantly to the demands on their strength, and this was what he had hardly dared to hope. For during the previous winter, when General Amherst ordered the British regulars south by sea, many of them immediately upon their arrival in Charlestown, succumbed to an illness occasioned by drinking the brackish water of certain wells of the city. Coming in response to the urgent appeals of the province to the commander-in-chief of the army to defend the frontier against the turbulent Cherokees who ravaged the borders, the British force were looked upon as public deliverers, and the people of the city took the ill soldiers from the camps into their own private dwellings, nursing them until they were quite restored. No troops could have better endured the extreme hardships which they successfully encountered in their march northward. So swift an advance seemed almost impossible. The speed of the movement apparently had not been anticipated, even by that wily and watchful enemy, the Cherokees. It has been said that at this critical juncture the Indians had failed to receive the supply of ammunition from the French which they had anticipated, although a quantity, inadequate for the emergency, however, reached them a few days later. At all events Colonel Grant was nearly free of the district where disaster so menaced him before he received a single shot. He had profited much by his several campaigns in this country since he led that rash, impetuous, and bloody demonstration against Fort Duquesne, in which he himself was captured with nineteen of his officers, and his command was almost cut to pieces. Now his scouts patrolled the woods in every direction. His vanguard of Indian allies under command of a British officer was supported by a body of fifty rangers and one hundred and fifty light infantry. Every precaution against surprise was taken.

Late one afternoon, however, the main body wavered with a sudden shock. The news came along the line. The Cherokees were upon them--upon the flank? No; in force fiercely assaulting the rear-guard. It was as Grant had feared impossible in these narrow defiles to avail himself of his strength, to face about, to form, to give battle. The advance was ordered to continue steadily onward,--difficult indeed, with the sound of the musketry and shouting from the rear, now louder, now fainter, as the surges of attack ebbed and flowed.

A strong party was detached to reinforce the rear-guard. But again and again the Cherokees made a spirited dash, seeking to cut off the beef herd, fighting almost in the open, with as definite and logical a military plan of destroying the army by capturing its supplies in that wild country, hundreds of miles from adequate succor, as if devised by men trained in all the theories of war.