"And G.o.d made you the gentlest and most beautiful of all granddaughters, my dear," he answered gallantly. "Monday I will have here the best single-foot saddle beast in this country for you to ride, and I will send a man to escort you, who will guarantee your safety."

"Oh, Grandpa! I don't wish him to go any further than Boon's Ford. He can turn back thah. I feel sure Lem and Buddy and Slab will come back with me."

"Just as you will, Belle-Ann," he agreed, and the two mingled their mutual, uncontrollable outbursts of ecstasy as they joined the figure lingering amid the mystic vacillating shadows of the rose-tree.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE RED DEBT

All through these wretched months, Lem Lutts had weltered in jail.

During the first hideous weeks of his incarceration he thought his reason would not serve him longer. He felt that he would surely go mad.

Night after night he stood with dull, hopeless eyes at his cell door, his fingers twined around the mercilessly cold iron bars, gazing across the dim corridor at the blank stone wall.

When "Creeping Jesus" glided up to his cell door like a phantom, and flashed his lantern upon Lem, he found him hour after hour wide awake, his eyes burning and starry with the unquenchable fire of a throbbing, wild, mad unrest. The keepers wondered how he kept alive, considering the amount of food he took and the sleep he had.

Belle-Ann's face was ever before him. Her beautiful vision floated evermore through the dark confines of his cell. Many times he had scribbled letters to Belle-Ann, with fond hopes that some word from her would come back to him, not knowing that these missives had never reached the outside of the jail.

He had lolled upon the iron cot through the soul-wrenching hours of countless nights, staring up through the black toward the concrete ceiling. His groping mind saw no solution written in the dark. Merciless a.s.sumptions in default of proofs had opened the great loathsome cage whose maw had gulped his body.

True--he had helped his father work the "still" that his great-grandfather had worked with a free conscience. That was all--the "still" that the despised law had never yet unearthed. The aspect of the law conformed with the teachings of his father. It fitted unto the sights that his own eyes had beheld. Where was its equity? He had seen his own relation shot down in cold, cruel blood. This law had never come forward to punish the wrong and champion the right. This law only hovered like a python above its prey, and struck when it had advantage.

The law was a mangy, fanged reptile--a monster that bit the honest rights of the people out of their hearts; then clawed and rolled and mauled their bodies. He had heard that G.o.d inspired the wise men who made the law. Surely, the Almighty had not lent His seal to this curse.

The G.o.d that Maw Lutts had told him about--He, who would some day make all things right in Kentucky--was not a party to this law that had finally taken the lives of his parents and had taken him. It was all the evil, G.o.dless work of men. It was the plot of a city faction. He was in the hands of a gang. In the last days of his jail life, the boy's philosophy had reduced the blame to a unit, until it fixed the whole responsibility upon a single man--"Big Pete" Burton--leader of the gang.

The boy, who had never in his life before been outside the limits of the c.u.mberland, had gone to jail, on that eventful day, innocent. He came out guilty. The mountain tinge had long since deserted his cheek and left it jail-hued. The simple-souled eyes now shone with the flinty stare, the designing needle-glints, the relentless play from eye to eye that traverses the orbs of the jail-man. He came out guilty, not of that which he had knowingly already done, but guilty of the added thing now stored away in the core of his being that he meant to do.

The heart-breaking midnight loneliness and the nerve-stabbing "third degree" had not sucked the fire from his feudal veins. His religion now measured by his capacity for revenge, Lem Lutts came out of prison, his young heart and soul and strength obsessed by a sacred quest. His suspicions ratified in jail, he came out tarnished and arrayed against the world. In the centre of this flaming theatre of vengeance there ever stalked one leading figure, one solitary actor--a huge animal-headed man flaunting a frayed precept, called law--the monster law-man reaching for the rights and the blood of the people--he of the shadow-built body and the charmed life--that fearless ghost-sp.a.w.n who never backed away from the mouth of a gun--he who always plunged toward the flame and the smoke and fought in the open--he whose skin was tattooed by the Winchester stencil of the mountaineer; but who still lived, and pursued, and fought on--the man who forged always onward with uncanny precision, ever stalking the hillman, ever reaching for his sanctum with merciless, untiring law-biting fury.

The vision of this supernatural man, who had killed his parents, stood in front of the boy's life and blocked his untamed spirit with taunts.

Loyal to inherited instincts; guided by the influence of environment; handicapped by ignorance; fanatically brave in his peculiarly educated understanding of justice, and property rights--the boy saw only this man. This hated enemy had not deserted him in jail. "Big Pete" had visited him time and time again. He had coaxed, abused, threatened, cajoled. He had even "manhandled" Lem, but never an utterance had crossed the boy's lips to betray. Finally, they had put him in the dungeon. When he emerged from the "black hole of Calcutta," he was thinner, chalk-hued, and benumbed of brain, but unrelenting, and "Big Pete" knew there was a demerit across his record. He did not make an informer.

To-day they had released Lem Lutts in disgust. The revenuer, Burton, was on hand with that same despicable stare, and followed him from the warden's office to the street.

"I'll get you yet, Lutts," predicted the detective. "I'll bust that gang, and I'll send you to Atlanta the next time. I'll bust you, or I'll get you like I did your--your----" his temerity broke. "I'll get you all right--I'll be on your trail in a week." To this gentle benediction he added a gentle push as emphasis.

Slight as the push was, Lem lost his balance and went to his knees, his hat falling to the walk. When he gained his feet and faced about, the officer stared in dumb amazement at the savage figure before him. Lem's stoicism had left him. His immobile features yielded to the volcanic hatred within. His light eyes glinted like full sockets of quicksilver.

The froth fermented and bubbled off his twitching lip.

"Yes--yes--yo' houn' dog!--yo' kilt my pap, an' my maw--yo' did!" he shrieked out in a riot of rage. "Yore 'lowing t' git hain't a gittin', hit hain't'--yo' kin 'low, an' 'low, an' 'low--thet hain't a gittin'--yore a pesky coward--yore a d.a.m.n woman-killer--an' th' day'll c.u.m when we'uns 'll run th' cow-brutes acrossin' yore snaky ole grave, we will! An' our'n hawgs'll root parsley offin' yore ole houn'-dawg grave, they will--yo' kilt my pap an' my maw, yo' did--an' hits we'uns what'll make a stinkin' hole fo' yore ole carca.s.s,--what'll run the wild skunks out o' th' mountains--a hole what'll make th' buzzards puke.

"Yo' kilt my pap an' my maw--yo' he-skunk!--an' ef they's a G.o.d up in th' clouds, He'll see yore ole bones a-burnin' up in h.e.l.l 'fore long--He will."

He bleated out his imprecations, his frothy, distraught utterances tumbling together and stifling his speech. His wrist-band became loosened, and he stretched a sleeveless, naked arm high over his bared head to solemnize an oath that had sealed itself in his tempestuous heart. The sullen officer scowled at him, speechless; then grimly, silently, turned his back upon the lava of this mountain boy's impotent frenzy.

Panting and dazed, Lem walked in a circle around his hat, which lay on the walk. Finally picking it up, he backed away from some curious eyes that had gathered, and ambled off toward the Kentucky river. Near two hundred miles from Moon mountain, forlorn, soul-sick, friendless, moneyless, but free, with one steadfast, consuming purpose fixed in his heart,--an organic purpose which he kept protected with prayerful importunities to Providence that it might not go amiss!

When Lem got his bearings, he started cross-country afoot. At the end of the ninth day he found himself on the skirts of the Big Sandy country.

With that tireless wolf-gait, he put the rugged miles behind him. All through the moonless night he tramped with eager eyes fixed toward the east where the hills piled higher and higher, and penciled a sable, ragged border against the paling, myriad stars.

At length the atmosphere grew heavy and a flume of languid clouds straggled up where they hung upon the distant mountain peaks, pregnant with pulsing heat lightning. When, in the loneliness of that weird hour, the darkest epoch between night and morning, Lem beheld, silhouetted against the incessant flashes of lightning, the sombre dome of Moon mountain--that sullen watch-dog of the c.u.mberland--he pushed ahead unmindful of fatigue, while out of the wreckage of his battered soul, and aggrieved senses, there rose up a semblance of his old self as he lessened the distance between him and his beloved home.

Before the sun was up, and while the transparent jewels still trembled on the damp face of the wilderness, Lem was on the last half of his climb. He forged onward, his head aflutter with a multiplicity of antic.i.p.ation that precedes the sight of a long absent home. Presently he espied a thin column of smoke aloft, which he knew issued from his own cherished habitat. He pulsed with a savage delight. With the pungent odors of a horde of familiar, endeared growing things in his nostrils, he throbbed with the salient, rabid joy of an escaped jungle animal back again to its own. In a vortex of ecstasy he viewed the wild, enchanting scenes developing through a film of early morning mist.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE SHOOTING OF PETER BURTON

When finally Lem reached the narrow twist where the trail jutted out and clung to the dew-damp breast of the mountain, he halted and dropping his torn shoes, which he had carried in his hand the past hour, he gazed along the ragged channel of a blind gulch that bit into the base of the mountain. The tree-fringed mouth of this gulch framed a picture below that entranced him. Upheld on the gra.s.s-grown palm of the distant clearing, he saw the squatty outlines of the meeting-house.

Like a blow from a bludgeon the tragic details of that unforgettable tragedy hissed and rankled anew in his brain;--that red, accursed half-hour amid the naked shadows of a lugubrious dusk, with death at his elbow; the cry of the panther in his ears, and a ghost that breathed and scowled and cursed over him.

Motionless, he looked at that wooden magnet below with a rapt, breathless stare. When he seized his damaged shoes and started onward, two stinging tears, hot with the acme of bitterness, fell off his chin, through his open shirt-front, and rolled across the white scars that dappled his breast.

When he made the next turn he was in full view of the cabin. He saw the blue-black martins, swirling around and chattering over their box. He heard the crowing of the c.o.c.ks, and the see-saw music of the guineas behind the log barn. He saw the red steers reluctant to leave their warm wallow in the be-dewed stable yard. He placed his fingers to his mouth and gave two shrill whistles. In an instant his father's spotted hound bounded from behind the cabin, followed by four other obstreperous dogs.

While the dogs were yapping and mobbing him with their boisterous welcome, Slab appeared at the cabin door, followed by Bud half-dressed.

"Hallaluyah! hallaluyah! hallaluyah!" shouted the old negro, gesticulating joyously and shambling pell-mell down the descent.

On the backward path to the cabin there followed a noisy and gladsome reunion. Hanging to his brother's arm, Buddy kept crying crazily:

"Lem hain't daid--Lem hain't daid--air yo', Lem?"

While Lem ate his breakfast, he told his own sad story and, in turn, Bud and the negro poured into his ears the happenings of the past months.

Nor did Buddy omit a single detail of these events. He began with the trapping of a brown bear, and ended with the rehearsal of that terrible fight at Junction City, as he exhibited the scars of that sanguine combat.

"I air ole Cap Lutts' boy--hain't I, Lem?" he ended pridefully, probing for his brother's commendation.

"Yo' sho' air, Buddy--an' I air powerful happy t' own yo' fo' my brother--yo' kin show pap's blood in yore veins any day--I 'low yo' kin hold th' mounting some day," lauded Lem, with an affectionate slap, "an'

yore brother Lem'll git thet onery low-down Sap McGill fo' shootin' a boy--fo' shootin' my brother. He'll answer--same's th' revenuer. I was thinkin' o' leavin' fo' a spell, Buddy, but I'll not leave heah, as long as G.o.d Almoughty holds th' clouds over these hills, an' my heart beats--I'll not leave til' I kill 'em both--I won't--I won't leave."

Worn and weary as he was, Lem did not wait to rest. He bathed his aching, swollen feet, and slipping on a pair of cow-hide moccasins, he hastened away with Buddy, to surprise Johnse Hatfield, and the faithful men at the still. And as he pa.s.sed Eagle Crown, his eyes sought its lofty apex and his heart throbbed with a deep yearning. The vision of the absent girl who had gone out of his life and carried with her every fibre of joy that had hitherto woofed his existence--now stood before him with a vividness and insistency that eclipsed all previous visitations.

In a measure, the surprise was turned upon himself, for they heard a shot and came suddenly upon Johnse Hatfield on the trail, crouching behind a boulder, his rifle still smoking, and peering keenly over into the laurel thicket below. When he looked up and beheld Lem, back again alive and well, he almost collapsed. Then the wild joy of Johnse's greeting merged swiftly into a grimmer enthusiasm as he said:

"I plugged em at last, Lem."

"Who?"

"Th' revenuer--I jest plugged em," enlightened Johnse.

"Burton?" cried Lem, unwilling to believe the news.