CHAPTER III

The two-storied house of Aaron McGivins stood on a hill-side overlooking a stretch of cleared acreage. It was a dwelling place of unusual pretentiousness for that land of "Do-without," where inexorable meagerness is the rule of life. Just now in a room whose hearth was wide, upon a four-poster bed, lay the master of the place gazing upwards at the rafters with eyes hara.s.sed, yet uncomplaining.

Aaron McGivins had just cause for troubled meditation as he stretched there under the faded coverlet and under the impending threat of death, as well. His life had been one of scant ease and of unmitigated warfare with the hostile forces of Nature. Yet he had built up a modest competency after a life time of struggle. With a few more years of industry he might have claimed material victory. In the homely parlance of his kind he had things "hung-up," which signified such prosperity had come to him as came to the pioneer woodsmen who faced the famine times of winter with smoked hams hanging from their nails, and tobacco and pepper and herbs strung along the ceiling rafters.

Aaron McGivins had not progressed to this modestly enviable estate without the driving of shrewd bargains and the taking of bold chances.

It followed that men called him hard, though few men called him other than just. To his door came disputants who preferred his arbitration on tangled issues to the dubious chances of litigation, for he was also accounted wise.

His repute among his neighbors was that of a man devoted to peace, but one upon whom it was unsafe to impose. Those few who had stirred his slow anger into eruption, had found him one as distinctly to be feared as trusted.

Had political aspiration been in the pattern of Aaron's thought he might have gone down to the world below to sit in the state a.s.sembly.

From there in due time he might have gained promotion to the augmented dignities of Congress, but he had persistently waved aside the whispers of such temptation. "He hain't a wishful feller nohow," the stranger was always told, "despite thet he knows hist'ry an' sich like lore in an' out an' back'ards an' forrards."

Now Aaron lay wounded with a pistol ball, and many problems of vital interest to himself remained unsolved. Whether he would live or die was guess work--a gamble. Whether the timber which he had felled would free him from his last debt and leave his two children independent, or be ravished from him by the insatiable appet.i.te of the flood was a question likewise unanswered. Whether or not the daughter, who was the man of the family after himself, would return in time to comfort his last moments was a doubt which troubled him most of all. He had sent her away as unequivocally as a stricken captain sends his first officer to the bridge, but he wanted her as a man, shipwrecked and starving, wants the sight of a sail or of a smoke-stack on an empty horizon.

And his boy--the boy who had given him small strength upon which to lean, was absent. He had gone idly and thoughtlessly before the emergency arose, and the man lying on the four-poster bed tried to argue for him, in extenuation, that he would have returned had he known the need. But in his bruised and doubting heart he knew that had it been Alexander, she would have read the warning in the first brook that she saw creeping into an augmented stream, and would have hastened home.

About the room moved the self-taught doctor, who was also the local Evangelist. Two neighbor women were there too, called from adjacent cabins to take the place of the daughter he had sent away. They were ignorant women, hollow-chested and wrinkled like witches because they had spent lives against dun-colored backgrounds, but they were wise in the matter of "yarbs" and simple nursing.

All night Aaron McGivins had lain there, restive and unable to sleep.

With him had been those matters which obtrude themselves, with confusing multiplicity, upon the mind of a man who was yesterday strong and unthreatened and who to-day faces the requirement of readjusting all his scheme from the clear and lighted ways of life to the gathering mists of death. He had seen through a high-placed window the gray of dawn grow into a clearer light, making visible rag-like streamers of wet and scudding clouds. He had a glimpse of mountain-sides sodden with thaw--the thaw to which he owed his whole sum of sudden perplexities.

Then the door swung open.

Eagerly the bed-ridden man turned his eyes towards it; eagerly, too, the doctor's gaze went that way, but the two women, glancing sidewise, sniffed dubiously and stiffened a little. To them the anxiously awaited daughter was an uns.e.xed creature whom they could neither understand nor approve. They had lived hard and intolerent lives, accepting drudgery and perennial child-bearing as unquestioned mandates of destiny. Accustomed to the curt word and to servile obedience they had no understanding for a woman who a.s.serted herself in positive terms of personality. To them a "he-woman" who "wore pants" and admitted no s.e.x inferiority was at best a "hussy without shame." If such a woman chanced also to be beautiful beyond comparison with her less favored sisters, the conclusion was inescapable. They could read in her self-claimed emanc.i.p.ation only the wildness of a filly turned out to pasture without halter or hobble; the wildness of one who scorns respectability; for primitive morality is pathetically narrow. It may sing piously about the pyre of a burning witch, but it can hardly grasp the pagan chast.i.ty of a Diana.

And it was a Diana both chaste and vital who stood in this wide-flung door. Behind her far radiant background was the full light of a young day. For an instant the scowl of storm-laden skies broke into a smile of sunlight as though she had brought the brightness with her. But she stood poised in an att.i.tude of arrested action--halted by the curb of anxiety. The whole vitality and clean vigor of her seemed breathless and questioning. Fear had spurred her into fleetness as she had crossed the hills, yet now she hesitated on the threshold. At first her eyes could make little of the inner murk, where both lamp and fire had guttered low and gray shadows held dominance.

But she herself stood illumined by that transitory flash of morning sun. It played in an aura about the coppery coils of her hair and kindled into vivid color the lips parted in suspense.

After a moment her eyes had reaccommodated themselves to the dispiriting darkness and her bosom heaved to a sigh of relief; of thanksgiving. Under the heaped coverlets of the bed she had seen the movement of feeble hand stirred in a gesture of welcome.

The neighbor women, bent on a mission of charity, yet unable to lay aside their hard convictions, gazed non-committally on, as though they would draw aside their skirts from contamination, yet sought to do so with the least possible measure of ostentation or offense.

That att.i.tude Alexander did not fail to comprehend but she ignored it, giving back to the smouldering eyes of disapproval level look for look.

Then she said quietly: "Brother Sanders, kin I hev speech with him--or must he lay plum quiet?"

The man of healing pa.s.sed a bewildered hand across his tousled forehead, and with thin fingers combed his long beard.

"He ought, properly speakin', ter stay quiet--but yit--he's frettin'

fer ye so thet hit mought harm him wuss ter deny him."

"I'll aim ter keep him es placid es I kin," said the girl, and in obedience to her gesture the others left the room.

Then Alexander dropped to her knees and her hands closed tightly over the thin one that the wounded man thrust weakly up to her. Even now there was no woman-surrender to tears; only wide eyes agonized with apprehension while her shoulders shook as a man's may shake with inward sobs that leave the eyes dry.

In a low voice she made her report. "Ther dam's finished. Without ther flood overtops ther highest mark on record, them logs is saved."

Old Aaron nodded gratefully and gazed in silence at the rafters overhead, realizing that he must conserve his slender strength and that there was much to say. The girl, too, waited until at length he made a fresh beginning.

"Afore ye came, Alexander, me an' yore maw hed done prayed mighty fervent fer a man child."

"I knows thet," she interrupted. "I knows. .h.i.t full well, an' I've sought deespite how I was borned ter be a man."

"Ye hain't only tried--ye've done succeeded," he a.s.sured her, then after a long drawn breath he went on. "Most folks 'lowed hit was like faultin' ther Almighty ter feel thet-a-way. They said hit war plum rebellious."

The girl whose cheeks had gone pallid and whose lips were tight drawn spoke defiantly. "I reckon we hain't keerin' overly much what other folks thinks."

"An' yit," the father made slow answer, "what folks agrees ter think makes ther laws of life whether hit be right or wrong--I'd hev been willin' ter raise ye up like a gal ef hit hadn't been thet Joe----"

He faltered there with Love's unwillingness to criticise his son and the girl only nodded, saying nothing.

"Joe's a good boy, with a sweet nature," went on the father at last.

"He favors his maw--an' she was always gentle. Yes, he's a good boy--an' in a country whar a feller kin live without fightin', I reckon he'd be accounted smart beyond ther commonality."

Again the mountaineer's face was contorted into a spasm of pain and his labored breathing demanded a respite of silence. Then slowly he declared with the unvarnished candor of the backwoods: "Joe's got all a man needs--but--jest--guts!"

The kneeling figure reluctantly nodded her a.s.sent. These admissions as to one's nearest and dearest must at times be made between men who face facts.

"Ef I pa.s.ses out, I wants ye ter kinderly look atter him like he ought ter look atter you."

A stray lock of heavy hair had fallen across the girl's violet eyes, and with an impatient gesture at the reminder of her s.e.x, Alexander tossed it back. "I gives ye my pledge," she said simply.

Then she rose from her knees and stood looking off through the window with a fixity that argued a deep dedication of purpose. "An' I pledges ye somethin' else too," she broke out in a voice suddenly savage. "Ef ye dies Bud Sellers belongs ter me ter kill--an' I won't nowise fail."

But at that the wounded man raised a deter rent hand shaken with palsied anxiety.

"No--no!" he gasped. "Thet's ther sperit I've done sought ter combat all my life--ther shot from ther la'rel--ther lay-wayin' of enemies. I couldn't rest easy ef ye denied me that pledge."

Alexander's hands clenched themselves, and her lips were compressed.

"I don't aim ter lay-way him," she declared with an ominous quiet. "I aims ter reckon with him es man ter man."

"Alexander." He spoke with slow difficulty but she knew that the words came earnestly from his heart. "I hain't skeercely got ther strength ter argyfy with ye, but without ye seeks ter hinder me from layin'

peaceful in my last sleep ye'll bide by my command. Ther boy wasn't hisself when he harmed me. He war plum crazed. No man loves me better than what he does when he's in his right mind. No man wucked harder down thar. I fergives him full free. I wants ye ter act ther same an'

ter make Joe do likewise."

The girl covered her face with her hands and turned from the bed. She went for a moment to the door and flung it open. There was no longer any sunshine--only a dome of leaden heaviness and the wail of dismal wind through the timber. To the father's eyes, despite her masculine attire she was all feminine as she stood there and his face grew tender as he watched the curls stirring at her temples.

Finally she wheeled and with a military stiffness marched back. Slowly she nodded her head. "I gives ye thet pledge too;" she said, "since ye wants. .h.i.t--but I gives. .h.i.t with a right heavy sperit."

He reached up and took her hand, drawing her down to the bed by his side.

"Alexander," he said softly, "mebby I hain't played quite fa'r with ye my own self. I've done tried ter raise ye up like a man because I could always kinderly lean on ye--but ye've done been both a son an' a daughter ter me. Maybe though when I'm gone ther woman in ye'll come uppermost an' ye'll think hardly of me fer what I did."

"Think hard of ye fer tryin' ter make a man of me!" Her voice was as full of scornful protest as though a soldier had said, "Think hard of you because you taught me valor!"

He smiled before he spoke again. "I've done warned young men off from co'tin' ye on pain of harm an' death--an' when I'm dead they'll come in lavish numbers seekin' ter make up fer lost time."