"No, I ain't hurt, Aunt Nancy," said Creed desolately, and he stared past her at the wall. "But looks to me like I'm cursed. I meant so well----"

He choked on the word. "I'd just had a talk with--She said--we--I thought that everything was about to come right. And now--I've killed Blatch Turrentine, and I've just got away from the others. They was all after me."

Chapter X

A Spy

Old Jephthah was winding the clock when the door--which he had closed some time ago after the last retiring guests--flung violently open, Andy paused, flying foot on the threshold, and gasped out hoa.r.s.ely,

"Pap--Creed Bonbright's killed Blatch and got away from us!"

The Lusk girls had staid to help Judith clear up, intending to remain over night unless Andy and Jeff returned in time to take them home. The three young women working at the table lifted pale faces; Pendrilla let fall the plate in her hand and broke it. Unconscious of the fact, she stood staring with open mouth at the fragments by her feet. Jephthah took one more turn mechanically, then withdrew the key and laid it down.

"Whar at?" he inquired briefly.

"Up on our place," said Wade who now appeared at the boy's side.

"Bonbright throwed him over Foeman's Bluff."

"How come it?" queried the head of the tribe.

"They was a fussin'," began Andy, but his father interrupted him in a curious tone.

"Foeman's Bluff," he repeated. "What tuck Bonbright thar at this time o'

night?"

"That's what I say," panted Jim Cal's voice in the darkness outside. He had come straight from the still instead of going with Jeff and the others to search; and for all his flesh he had overtaken his brothers.

But there was none now to demand sardonically why he fled the seat of war and ran to the paternal shelter for re-enforcements. "Ef folks go nosin'

around whar they ain't wanted, sometimes they git what they don't like,"

he concluded.

Judith, very pale, had parted her lips to utter words of indignant defence, and denial of this broad imputation, but before she could speak Huldah Spiller irrupted into the room, her red curls flying, her bodice clutched about her in such a fashion as to suggest she had been undressing when the news reached her.

The mountain woman with temperament is reduced to the outlets of such occasions as these, or revival seasons and funerals; and Huldah Spiller, having abandoned the protesting Iley with her babies, whom the mother could not leave alone, meant to make the most of the occasion.

"You-all ain't got no right to talk the way you do about Creed," the red-haired girl burst out. "Him and me's been friends ever sence I went to Hepzibah, and there ain't a better man walks the earth. Ef he done anything to Blatch hit was becaze Blatch laywayed him an' jumped on him, an' he had to. Oh, Lord!" and she began to weep, "I wish't my daddy was here--I jest wish Pap Spiller was here. Pore Creed! Ef you-all git yo'

hands on him, mad thisaway, the Lord knows what will be did!"

Jephthah regarded his postulant daughter-in-law from under lowered, bushy brows.

"Kin you make her hush?" he inquired of Wade.

"I ain't got no interest in makin' her hush nor makin' her holler,"

returned Wade contemptuously. Dishonoured before his clan, his male dignity sadly shorn, his woman shrieking out the wrongs and excellences of another man--and that man a young and well-favoured enemy--his bitterness may be forgiven.

"Fetch the lantern," ordered Jephthah briefly. "We-all have got to git over thar and see to this business."

"Well, I'll hush--but I'm goin' along," volleyed Huldah.

"Le's us go too, Jude," pleaded Cliantha Lusk in a trembling whisper.

"I'm scared to be left here in the house with the men all gone. He might take a notion to come and raid the place and kill us. They do thataway in feud times. My gran' mammy----"

"Do hush!" choked Judith. But she hurried out in the wake of the departing men, Cliantha clinging to one arm, Pendrilla to the other.

They left the doors open, the candles flaring, and n.o.body to guard but the toothless old hound who slept and snored on the chip pile.

The journey to Foeman's Bluff, following the flicker of the lantern in Wade's hand, with the voices of the men coming back to her, hoa.r.s.e, fragmentary, ejaculatory, reciting Creed's offences a.s.severating that they had expected nothing else, was like a nightmare to Judith. When Cliantha screamed and clung to her and said she thought she saw Creed Bonbright in the bushes by the path-side, Judith shook her off angrily, but let the clamouring little thing creep back and make her peace.

"I forgot about you and Blatch--Oh, po' Judy!" moaned Cliantha. "Ef hit was me goin' to s'arch for the murdered body of my true love I don't know as I could put foot befo' foot!"

"The trail's mighty narrow here--I'll go in front," said Judith. She freed herself, and thereafter walked alone with bent head.

As they descended into the hollow Andy began to hoo-ee; and finally he was answered from the neighbourhood of the bluff. Up this they climbed, since on this side they were cut off from the region below it by an impa.s.sable gulley. Halting on the top and looking down, they could see a lantern moving about and catch faint sound of the men's voices.

"Who's down thar?" Jephthah's big rolling ba.s.s sent out the call. There was an ominous hesitation before Jeff's perturbed tones replied,

"Hit's me, pap, me an' Buck Shalliday an' Taylor Stribling."

Andy found a tall tree at the bluffs edge, and began to descend through its branches with the swiftness and agility of a monkey.

"How is he--is he alive?"

The old man put the query at the edge of the gulf, stooping, peering over. Jim Cal sat down suddenly and began wiping his forehead. The moonlight showed his round face very pale under its beaded sweat.

"Andy'll git hisself killed!" whimpered Pendrilla.

And Huldah broke into loud hysteric weeping, on the tide of which "Creed--Pap Spiller--Blatch Turrentine" were cast up now and again.

"Hush, cain't ye?" demanded Jephthah, angrily; "I cain't hear one word they answer me down thar. h.e.l.lo, boys. Is he livin'?"

Andy had evidently reached the searchers at the foot of the cliff. Loud, confused voices came up to those above. Finally,

"W'y, Pap, we ain't never found him," Jeff called.

"Ye _what_?" demanded the father incredulously.

"We ain't--never--found him," reiterated Jeff doggedly.

The old man drew back sharply with a look of swift anger in his face.

"Well, ef ye hain't found him by now ye better quit lookin', hadn't ye?"

he suggested as he straightened to his full height and turned his back.

"Creed Bonbright's jest about been here an' hid the body, that's what he's done," Taylor Stribling clamoured after him in futile explanation.

But the old man gave no heed. Lantern in hand, he was already addressing himself to a careful examination of the scene of the struggle. The torn vines where Creed had fallen through the fissure instantly caught his eye.