The old chaplain stuck his pipe into his mouth and brought it aflare again with two or three strong indrawing respirations.

"The surgeons said it would end in a case of dementia. I was sorry, for I had seen much that day that hurt me, and more than all was this. For I could picture that valiant young spirit going through life, spared by G.o.d's mercy; and it seemed to me that when the enemy, in whatever guise, should press him hard and defeat should bear him down he would have the courage and the ardor and the moral strength to rally on the reserve. He would rally on the guidon."

The old chaplain pulled strongly at his pipe, setting the blue wreaths of smoke circling about his head. "I should know that young fellow again wherever I might chance to see him."

"Did he collapse at last and verify the surgeon's prophecy?" asked the dealer.

"Well," drawled the chaplain, with a little flattered laugh, "I myself took care of that. Many years ago I studied medicine, before I was favored with a higher call. Neurology was my line. When the boy's horse sank exhausted beneath him, and he fell into a sleep or stupor on the carca.s.s, I removed the object of the obsession. I slipped the flag-staff, guidon and all, into a crevice of the rocks, where it will remain till the end of our time, be sure." He laughed in relish of his arbitrary intervention.

"There was a fine healthy clamor in camp the next morning about the lost guidon. But I did the soldier no damage, for he had been promoted to a lieutenancy for special gallantry on the field, and he therefore could no longer have carried the guidon if he had had both the flag and the troop."

The stories of camp and field, thus begun, swiftly multiplied; they wore the fire to embers, and the oil sank low in the lamps. There was a chill sense of dawn in the blue-gray mist when the group, separating at last, issued upon the veranda; the moon, so long hovering over the sombre ma.s.sive mountains, was slowly sinking in the west.

Among the shadows of the pillars a tall, martial figure lurked in ambush for the old chaplain, as he rounded the corner of the veranda on his way to his own quarters.

"Pa'son," a husky voice spoke from out the dim comminglement of the mist and the moon, "'twas me that carried that guidon in Dovinger's Rangers."

"I know it," declared the triumphant tactician. "I recognized you as soon as I saw you again."

"I'm through with this," the young mountaineer exclaimed abruptly, with an eloquent gesture of renunciation toward the deserted card-table visible through the vista of open doors. "I'm going home-to work! I'll never forget that I was marker in Dovinger's Rangers. I carried the guidon! And that last day I marked their way to glory! There's nothing left of them except honor and duty, but I'll rally on that, Chaplain. Never fear for me, again. I'll rally on the reserve!"

WOLF'S HEAD

It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,-the panther, the bear, the catamount, the wolf,-and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both fearsome and afraid, the man with a "wolf's head," on which was set a price, even as the State's bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.

One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being summoned to serve on a sheriff's posse in the discharge of the grimmest of duties.

"But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has survived, but the fact is obsolete," said Seymour, who was both a prig and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain of his sylvan accomplishments. "Our law places no man beyond the pale of its protection. He has a const.i.tutional right to plead his case in court."

"What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy that privilege-five hundred dollars?" asked Bygrave, who was a newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.

"Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive." Purcell's vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination of chances and relative values. "Therefore he is as definitely caput lupinum as any outlaw of old. n.o.body would be held accountable for cracking his 'wolf's head' off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive to live?"

"Jes by his rifle, I reckon," replied the rural gossip whom intrusive curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. "Though sence that thar big reward hev been n'ised abroad, I'd think he'd be plumb afraid ter fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days."

The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect, despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial contour of a gra.s.shopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his persistent, rasping chirp.

"That's what frets Meddy; she can't abide the idee of huntin' a human with sech special coursers ez money reward. She 'lows it mought tempt a' evil man or a' ignorunt one ter swear a miser'ble wretch's life away. Let the law strengthen its own hands-that's what Meddy say. Don't kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother's breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of that thar man what war growed up in a tree."

The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural perversion of the legend. But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the ground about it and idly listened.

"One day-'t war 'bout two year' ago-thar war a valley-man up hyar a-huntin' in the mountings with some other fellers, an' toward sunset he war a-waitin' at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek, hopin' ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon luck war ag'in' him, fer he got nuthin' but durned tired. So, ez he waited, he grounded his rifle, an' leaned himself ag'in' a great big tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an', folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked into a skellington's eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington's grisly face peerin' at him through a crack in the bark."

The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the ma.s.sive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he resumed:

"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o' place. So he kem,-the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the rise,-an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off'n the face of the yearth, hid out from the law,-that's the way Meddy takes it,-he hed clomb the tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin' o' course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It mought hev been deeper 'n he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't make the rise. He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood-it's rotted a deal sence then."

"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.

"n.o.body knows,-n.o.body keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o' tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock rifle he bed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an' 'lowed he war deceitful an' desertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin.

"A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.

"Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer a.s.sented easily.

"What's her name-Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical apt.i.tude for detail, no definite curiosity.

"Naw; Meddy-short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."

He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the sumac-bushes heralded an approach.

"That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She 'lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war lackin'."

For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower; the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who had not yet arrived. Purcell's boast that he could bake ash-cake proved a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff of life.

Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant's favor as she appeared, and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coa.r.s.e gown lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands, and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a l.u.s.trous brown, and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but distinct tracery of blue veins in her milky-white complexion, and she might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between her eyebrows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing. Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had brought and placed beside the camp-fire.

"Don't, Gran'dad," she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly forward-"don't put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box 'pears ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It'll eat shorter then, bein' fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer supper,"-dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,-"I baked some dodgers, too-four, six, eight, ten,"-she was counting a dozen golden-brown cates of delectable aspect-"knowin' they would hone fer cornmeal arter huntin' an' nuthin' else nohow air fitten ter eat with feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs?" She sprang up, and, standing on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. "Thar's ants in yer short-sweetenin'! How could you-uns let sech ez that happen?"

"Oh, surely not," exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact could not be gain-said; the neglected sugar was spoiled.

Meddlesome's unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic concerns disclosed other shortcomings. "Why n't ye keep the top on yer coffee-can? Don't ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin' open?" She repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: "We-uns ain't got no short-sweetenin' at our house, but I'll send my leetle brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin' fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar, Sol,"-addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,-"run ter the house an' fetch the sorghum-jug."

As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly called out in a frenzy of warning: "Go the other way, Sol-up through the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife."

Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger. Being unhurt, he was resentful. "They ain't none o' yer feet, nohow," he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.

"Oh, yes, Sol," said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it hern. So take keer of yer feet for her sake." He turned toward her jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even ter meddle with other folkses' mournin',-what they got through with a hunderd year' ago-tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in the tree."

She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.

Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky. He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections, and the helpless jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the door-yard. Should his integrity succ.u.mb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry clothes.

"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself. I'll take the short cut an' head him."

Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense, tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the mountain-side. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and after a moment's hesitation, she was springing from one to another of the great, half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent crystal-brown water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More than once, to evade the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the continuous roar, she stood still in mid-stream and gazed upward or at the opposite bank. The woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow and variant russet and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was impenetrable. The great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted sharply with the white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and sycamore and poplar, and, thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost illimitable avenues of sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of willows on the opposite bank, at the water's-edge, a spring, a circular, rock-bound reservoir; in the marshy margin she could see the imprints of the cleft hoofs of deer, and thence ran the indefinite trail known as a deer-path. The dense covert along the steep slope was a famous "deer-stand," and there many a fine buck had been killed. All at once she was reminded of the storied tree hard by, the tragedy of which she had often bewept.

There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing of so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of a last-year's storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre of the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures that the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these-she thought herself in a dream-a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as suddenly vanished!

Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat. She wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a muscular instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze at the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that a.s.sailed her untutored mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief so great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less poignant than the original shock when she realized that this face was not the grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence heretofore, but was clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive. Once more, as she gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure, and in that instant a glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand appeared,-beckoning her to approach.

It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that this was the fugitive, the "wolf's head," and should she turn to flee, he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward. Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision; though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was she who spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her arm that all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had induced his disclosure of his ident.i.ty.

"It's empty," she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch, and asked wonderingly, "Is game skeerce?"

His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. "Oh, yes, powerful skeerce," he replied with a bitter laugh.

There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. "Ye hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide," she admonished him. "This tree is a plumb cur'osity. Gran'dad Kettison war tellin' some camp-hunters 'bout'n it jes this evenin'. Like ez not they'll kem ter view it."