"I reckon," he remarked sullenly, "she hain't no more tee-totally tickled about yore a-marryin' of a widderer then what you be."

The girl's eyes were lifted with an amazed expression from the calico dress upon which she was working, and her face swiftly softened. But Newt, a stranger to tender emotions, and bent on presenting to every man and woman a face of defiance, gave no further sign of sympathy.

He went to the bed which had been a.s.signed to him, and threw himself on his back, from which position he lay scowling up at the smoked rafters and resting.

Presently, his mother began again her querulous bickering. The conversation was one-sided, and the boy, lying silent in his dark corner, noted that Minerva merely bent her head as one may bend it against the buffeting of gusty wind or rain. But he was himself less long suffering, and so he raised his voice with the dictatorial authority of a man rebuking a quarreling harem.

"Mammy," he ordered curtly, "I'm plumb sick an' tired o' heerin' all this-hyar blamed fursin', an' I wants ye ter shet up. If Clem's gal is a willin' ter endure all thet jawin', I hain't."

For an hour there was no sound in the cabin except the low, monotonous voice of Newt's sister, crooning an ancient "ballet" that once was sung in Scotland before the Pilgrims landed in the western world.

About sunset that afternoon, Newt came upon the Rawlins girl milking near the barn. When she raised her head from the flank of the cow and saw him standing a short distance away, a sudden stream of color came flooding to her cheeks and temples. He had not yet heard her speak a word, but now after stammering a moment she said:

"Hit was mighty good of ye, Newt, ter take up fer me. I'm much obliged."

The acknowledgment was somewhat difficult to make. This black sheep of her acquired family stood for all the things that the knightly Henry Falkins had deplored in speaking of the lawless spirit of the mountains.

He was the sullen impersonation of the murder-spirit which shoots from ambush. He had come from prison and it was Mercy, not Justice, that had opened the iron gates to set him free. She did not know that the testimony of Falkins had put him there, or that Newt's set purpose was revenge, but she had shaped her heart to despise him, and he had in a rough way stood forth her champion. Perhaps, after all, he too had been a victim of conditions bigger and blacker than his own nature.

Newt's scowl darkened. He was not accustomed to grat.i.tude and in it found embarra.s.sment.

"Huh!" he growled. "Hit warn't nothin'. I jest natcherly hates ter heer so much d.a.m.n' naggin'. Why don't ye jaw back at 'em? Air ye sceered?"

The girl shook her head. "I ain't here much," she said, "an' I reckon thar's enough squabblin' in this house without me joinin' in."

"Well, thet's yore business," commented the ex-convict, "but if I was you I'd stand up to 'em." He turned on his heel and left her.

To the house of McAllister Falkins "furriners" from the outside world came as to an oasis in a desert, or perhaps, more properly speaking, as to the tent of a great sheik set in the oasis, for the father of young Henry Falkins was "the grand old man of the mountains."

His forefathers had come from Virginia with the ideas of the old chivalric regime. It was the tradition that when the first Falkins set his face to the unbroken west, he had brought with his pioneer outfit a retinue of negroes, a string of race-horses and a coop of fighting c.o.c.ks. The game birds and the gamer horses had not been game enough to survive the hardships of the wilderness road, but the main stem of the Falkins stock had retained its stamina and refused through a century to degenerate. Collateral branches had one by one lapsed into the semi-barbarism of a cruelly isolated life. Nephews and cousins bearing the same name had succ.u.mbed to intermarriage and degeneracy, yet the main stem had grown straight. Old McAllister Falkins was a college man and a lawyer who did not practise. Though he was the foremost bearer of the name which stood linked with that of Spooner as giving t.i.tle to a feud that had bathed the country in bloodshed for generations, neither he nor his direct ancestors nor his direct descendant had ever been drawn into its vortex. In some miraculous fashion he had been able to stand aside, admired by his tempestuous kinsmen; respected even by the equally vindictive Spooners. To have raised a hand against "Old Mack"

Falkins would have been to defy both clans. To have raised a hand against his son would not have occurred to any Spooner other than young Newt, mad with rage and private hatred. Old McAllister Falkins had represented his district in Congress, by a vote of both factions, and his retirement had been voluntary. It was his hope that his son, too, might become the shepherd of these wild, goat-like sheep, and wield an influence for peace. Now, both father and son were deeply disquieted at the menace of a fresh up-flaring. The death of Falerin would fire the Falkins clansmen, and if that dreaded intriguer, Black Pete, showed his face in the hills it was difficult to see how calamitous days could be averted. As yet the Deacon had not appeared save in Winchester, but on Friday the Clark County court was to hear a motion for bail, made by the two defendants, and, if it were granted, Sat.u.r.day would see them back in Jackson--and then the deluge! Sat.u.r.day is a day for gathering at the county seat and for drinking white liquor. The Falkinses would without doubt be there, too, in force, ready to recognize and resent insult, and the town would be much like a powder-magazine used as a smoking-room.

McAllister Falkins had advised such of the Falkins leaders as he could reach to keep the clan out of Jackson, or, if that were impossible, to hold the dogs of pa.s.sion and carousal in leash. He meant to be there in person to aid in the work of pacification. If only Red Newton and the Deacon did not reappear, like Mohammedan prophets among wild tribesmen, the dangerous day might yet dawn and spend itself without bloodshed.

While the two enlightened men of the name were sitting one afternoon on the porch of their house, discussing these matters, they saw a horseman riding down the road which looped over the mountain. The traveler sat his saddle with straight shoulders and his height approached the gigantic. Before he had reached the palings of the yard fence, the angle of his black hat and the tilt of his chin proclaimed him the Deacon.

Old McAllister Falkins rose with a suppressed exclamation of dismay, and Henry bit off an oath.

Black Pete Spooner rode along at an easy amble, and outside the fence he drew rein and sang out in a grave and utterly unembarra.s.sed voice:

"Gentlemen, may I alight and have speech with you?"

The two Falkinses rose and walked down to meet the unexpected visitor, uncertain what att.i.tude to take in the face of such stupendous effrontery. The dark giant offered his hand, and said:

"I reckon you gentlemen are a little surprised to see me, and I guess when you know why I came you'll be still more surprised."

CHAPTER X

Gravely restraining their protests until the visitor should have spoken, yet heavy-hearted with premonition, the elder and younger Falkins led the way up the flagstone path to the porch. Had the head of the house of Montagu strolled casually in, his hands still red with murder, for an afternoon call at the strong-hold of the Capulets, his advent could hardly have been more unexpected or unwelcome. The Honorable McAllister Falkins and his son were mountaineers, and to the mountaineer the voluntary arrival of a guest under the roof-tree is a mandate to consideration so long as he remains there.

The Deacon disposed himself in a heavy split-bottomed rocker, and for a time a survey of the landscape seemed to absorb him.

The house sat in its yard overlooking the twisting road and the steep banks of the middle fork of Kentucky River. For that unlettered land it was a mansion, with its two-story height and painted weather-boarding.

Its glazed, green-shuttered windows gave it a certain dignity. Instead of puncheon floors, there were carpets and such furniture as one might have seen in the outer world, mingled strangely with old-fashioned reminders of pioneer life. At one end of the porch leaned a discarded spinning wheel, and an arm's length away stood the phonograph with which the two Falkins men had been soothing their anxieties with the strains of "Il Trovatore."

Off to the side of the house stretched an orchard in whose shadowed rim of lingering locust bloom ranged a trim line of ancient "bee gums." It was a simple and rambling farmhouse, but in a country of squalid habitations it partook of a certain grandeur, and one must needs go far to find a more ruggedly magnificent outlook, over park-like stretches of patriarchal timber, palisading river-banks and towering mountains, than that commanded from its verandah.

For a few moments the Deacon sat in his rocker with as little seeming realization of his unwelcomeness as though he were an old friend and constant visitor. He sat upright, his hat lying on the floor at his side and his hands resting on his large-boned knees. Both the men of the Falkins house acknowledged anew how unusual and commanding was that face, and how difficult it was to recognize upon it any hall-mark of crime or villainy. The dark eyes were steadfastly gentle, and even under the long drooping mustache the lips held a sort of dreamer's curve.

Finally, the visitor spoke.

"The more I study about it, the more I'm afraid that Sat.u.r.day can't hardly pa.s.s by without trouble."

McAllister Falkins rose from his chair and paced the porch. At last, he paused before Black Pete Spooner, and began steadily:

"I don't know why you have come to me." The old gentleman's voice was self-contained, though his eyes bored accusingly into those of his visitor. "I certainly shall express no criticism until you have said in full whatever you came here to say. You must know that I have always held aloof from feud-bickerings. You must know that I have always counseled impartially and truly such men as have come to me from both factions. But above all you must know that, if there is bloodshed in Jackson on Sat.u.r.day, no other thing will be so directly responsible for it as your reappearance in the county. Your presence and Falerin's death will be the twin causes. If you seek to avoid a holocaust, you are pursuing a strange course."

While Falkins talked, the Deacon listened attentively, acknowledging the force of each remark with a grave nod of his head. At the end of the speech he sat awhile with his brows judicially drawn, then answered:

"There's a heap of truth and good sense in all that. I don't expect you to take my word on any matter, but I'm here to propose doin' things, not just sayin' things. I think there is one way to keep these boys from mischief, if you two men and me can act together." He paused after that a moment, then his voice came deeply resonant and full of warning. "And I tell you that whether I'm at the North Pole or right here, unless we three do get together, there's goin' to be h.e.l.l in Jackson next Sat.u.r.day."

He held them both with so steady and guileless a gaze that for a moment both of the advocates of peace and law wondered if they were not actually talking with a convert; wondered half-convinced, despite all they knew of his history. Henry Falkins filled his pipe in silence, and then, as the three settled themselves in their chairs, Black Pete began again:

"You men both know what a bad name I had when I left these mountains. I was guilty of several crimes to start with, and my reputation did the rest. Whatever meanness broke loose got laid to my door. I'm not complainin'. Enough of them accusations were true to give fellers license to suspect me in the balance. Then I went away."

"With the understanding that you were to stay away," interrupted McAllister Falkins.

The Deacon nodded his head.

"I'm comin' to that," he answered with tranquillity. "Anyhow, I went away, and I've come back with just one hatred left."

"What is that?" demanded Henry Falkins. This man with one hatred was more to be feared than another with many.

"Hatred of lawlessness and the sort of meanness that a.s.sa.s.sinates and quarrels," was the quiet and surprising response.

There was no offer to argue or deny, and after a moment he went on.

"That sounds a little funny from my lips, I reckon, but all I ask is a chance to prove it."

"And simply going away wrought this conversion?" It was the elder man who put the question, and his voice was frank in its scepticism.

The Deacon shook his head.

"No, not only that. It's a long story, and there's no need for tellin'

it all. But some of my time out West I was prospectin' in Old Mexico. I was took down with fever, and they nursed me at a monastery. I caught on to considerable Spanish, and--well, to cut it short--I got religion. But as far as my past record goes, maybe just because I've got the name of being so mean and troublesome, there are some men here-abouts that would hearken to my counsel when they wouldn't listen to a better man."