"When the Devil's got the road," said Archie B., "decent fo'ks had better take to the wood. I'd fixed him an' his ole dorg, an' now you come along an' spile it all."

He made a cross mark in the road and spat on it. Then he turned with his back to the cross, threw his hat over his head and said slowly: "_Venture pee wee under the bridge! bam--bam--bam!_"

"What's that fur?" asked Ozzie B., as he ceased sobbing. His brother always had something new, and it was always absorbingly interesting to Ozzie B.

"That," said Archie B., solemnly, "I allers say after meetin' a Jonah in the road. The spell is now broke. Jus' watch me fix Jud Carpenter agin. Wanter see me git even with him? Well, come along."

"What'll you do?" asked Ozzie B.

"I'll make that mustang break his neck for the way he treated you, or my name ain't Archie B. b.u.t.ts--that's all. _Venture pee wee under the bridge, bam--bam--bam!_"

"No--oo--no," began Ozzie B., beginning to cry again--"Don't kill 'im--it'll be cruel."

"Don't wanter see me go an' git even with the man that's jus' licked you for nuthin'?"

"No--oo--no--" sobbed Ozzie B. "Paw says--leave--leave--that for--the Lord."

"Tarnashun!"--said Archie B., spitting on the ground, disgustedly--, "too much relig'un is a dang'us thing. You've got all of paw's relig'un an' maw's brains, an' that's 'nuff said."

With this he kicked Ozzie B. soundly and sent him, still sobbing, up the road.

Then he ran across the wood to head off Jud Carpenter, who he knew had to go around a bend in the road.

There was no bird that Archie B. could not mimic. He knew every creature of the wood. Every wild thing of the field and forest was his friend. Slipping into the underbrush, a hundred yards from the road down which he knew Jud Carpenter had to ride, he prepared himself for action.

Drawing a turkey-call from his pocket, he gave the call of the wild turkey going to roost, as softly as a violinist tries his instrument to see if it is in tune.

Prut--prut--prut--it rang out clear and distinctly.

"All right,"--he said--"she'll do."

He had not long to wait. Up the road he soon saw the Whipper-in, riding leisurely along.

Archie B. swelled with anger at sight of the complacent and satisfactory way he rode along. He even thought he saw a smile--a kind of even-up smile--light his face.

When opposite his hiding place, Archie B. put his call to his mouth: _Prut--Prut--P-R-U-T_--it rang out. Then _Prut--prut!_

Jud Carpenter stopped his horse instantly.

"Turkeys goin' to roost."--he muttered. He listened for the direction.

_Prut--Prut_--it came out of the bushes on the right--a hundred yards away under a beech tree.

Jud listened: "Eatin' beech-mast,"--he said, and he slipped off his pony, tied him quietly to the limb of a sweet-gum tree, and c.o.c.king his long gun, slipped into the wood.

Five minutes later he heard the sound still farther off. "They're walkin'," muttered Jud--"I mus' head 'em off." Then he pushed on rapidly into the forest.

Archie B. let him go--then, making a short circuit, slipped like an Indian through the wood, and came up to the pony hitched on the road side.

Quietly removing the saddle and blanket, he took two tough p.r.i.c.kly burrs of the sweet-gum and placed one on each side of the pony's spine, where the saddle would rest. Then he put the blanket and saddle back, taking care to place them on very gently and tighten the girth but lightly.

He shook all over with suppressed mirth as he went farther into the wood, and lay down on the mossy bank behind a clay-root to watch the performance.

It was a quarter of an hour before Jud, thoroughly tired and disgusted, gave up the useless search and came back.

Untying the pony, he threw the bridle rein over its head and vaulted lightly into the saddle.

Archie B. grabbed the clay-root and stuffed his wool hat into his mouth just in time.

"It was worth a dollar," he told Ozzie B. that night, after they had retired to their trundle bed. "The pony squatted fust mighty nigh to the groun'--then he riz a-buckin'. I seed Jud's coat-tail a-turnin'

summersets through the air, the saddle and blanket a-followin'. I heard him when he hit the swamp hole on the side of the road _kersplash!_--an' the pony skeered speechless went off tearin'

to-ards home. Then I hollered out: '_Go it ole, fly-ketcher--you're as good for tad-poles as you is for bird-eggs_'--an' I lit out through the wood."

Ozzie B. burst out crying: "Oh, Archie B., do you reckin the po' man got hurt?"

Archie B. replied by kicking him in the ribs until he ceased crying.

"Say yo' prayers now and go to sleep. I'll kick you m'se'f, but I'll lick anybody else that does it."

As Ozzie B. dozed off he heard:

"_Venture pee-wee under the bridge--bam--bam--bam._ Oh, Lord, you who made the tar'nal fools of this world, have mussy on 'em!"

CHAPTER VI

THE FLINT AND THE COAL

Love is love and there is nothing in all the world like it. Its romance comes but once, and it is the perfume that precedes the ripened fruit of all after life. It is not amenable to any of the laws of reason; nor subject to any law of logic; nor can it be explained by the a.n.a.logy of anything in heaven or earth. Do not, therefore, try to reason about it. Only love once--and in youth--and be forever silent.

One of the mysteries of love to older ones is that two young people may become engaged and never a word be spoken. Put the girl in a convent, even, and let the boy but walk past, and the thing is done.

They look and love, and the understanding is complete. They see and sigh, and read each other's secret thoughts, past and present--each other's hopes, fears.

They sigh and are engaged, and there is perfect understanding.

Time and Romance travel not together. Time must hurry on. Romance would loiter by the way. And so Romance, in her completeness, loves to dwell most where Time, traveling over the mile-tracks of the tropics, which belong by heredity to Alabama--stalks slower than on those strenuous half-mile tracks that spin around the earth in lat.i.tudes which grow smaller as they approach the frozen pole.

The sun had reached, in his day's journey, the bald k.n.o.b of Sunset Peak, and there, behind it, seemed to stop. At least to Helen Conway, born and reared under the brow of Sand Mountain, he seemed every afternoon, when he reached the mountain peak, to linger, in a friendly way, behind it.

And a bold warrior-looking crest it was, helmeted with a stratum of sand-stone, jutting out in visor-shaped fullness about his head, and feathery above with scrub-oak and cedar.

Perhaps it had been a fancy which lingered from childhood; but from the time when Mammy Maria had first told her that the sun went to bed in the valley beyond the mountain until now,--her eighteenth year,--Helen still loved to think it was true, and that behind the face of Sunset Rock he still lingered to undress; and, lingering, it made for her the sweetest and most romantic period of the day.

True to her antebellum ideas, Mammy Maria dressed her two girls every afternoon before dinner. It is also true that she cooked the dinner herself and made their dresses with her own fingers, and that of late years, in the poverty of her drunken master, she had little to dress them with and less to cook.

But the resources of the old woman seemed wonderful--to the people round about,--for never were two girls more gorgeously gowned than Helen and Lily. It was humorous, it was pathetic--the way it was done.