CHAPTER x.x.xII

THE NEAR a.s.sa.s.sIN

The following day Lem Lutts arrayed himself in his newly purchased store clothes and prepared to face a strange, unfriendly world of which he knew little. Not a week, not a day, scarcely an hour had elapsed since Belle-Ann had gone to Proctor that thoughts of her were not uppermost in his mind. Indeed, it was the sustaining hope of seeing her that had held his unhappy being together. It was seemingly a wretched measure of years since that unforgettable day when he had kissed the little scar that crossed the part in her curls, when she had stood before him and crossed her heart, and pledged him that she would surely come back to him. But the day of her return, as he had marked it in his mind, a scintillating goal, promising an epoch of luxuriant life, had come, and long since pa.s.sed. He had, while in prison, written half a dozen crude letters addressed to Belle-Ann at Beattyville. His credulous mind had always supposed that these missives had reached their destination. As he had never received any reply to his letters, he had deducted that either the subtle influence of education and society had taken hold of her, weaning her heart away from all thoughts of the mountains, or that some unforeseen circ.u.mstance beyond her will had kept her silent. If it developed that he could not find her at the school, he had determined, next, to go down into the Big Sandy camps and hunt up her father.

In accordance with his sudden inception of this extended sojourn, he was quick to realize that to mingle with the proud inhabitants of the strange land, into which he sallied, he would be handicapped, and doubtless be put to a r.e.t.a.r.ding disadvantage by appearing among them in the crude garb of a mountaineer. He had gleaned this bit of wisdom while in prison. A credulous, guileless spirit can learn more of the world in a city jail in one month, than he can learn in twenty years out on the G.o.dhead, in the geodetic domains allotted him by Providence. Therefore, Lem had with rare forethought equipped himself in a manner not unpleasing, and calculated to ward off disdain and ridicule. However, he had postponed having his luxuriant locks shorn to the last minute, deciding to sacrifice them when he struck the first big town. So that now he looked a bit incongruous, his shining black derby contrasting oddly enough with his long, curling hair.

Lem had bidden Slab farewell, and after spending a time up in the Orchard beside the two mounds, he climbed up to Eagle Crown, his favorite, endeared refuge, to take what might be his last survey of the wild kingdom he loved so well. When he reached that dizzy height, he sat down to gain his breath. As he did so, his eyes fell upon a small, round object at his feet.

Instantly he picked it up, and with a reminiscent smile pressed it fondly to his lips. It was a b.u.t.ton off Belle-Ann's gingham gown.

Buddy in his impatience had wandered on down the trail toward the loop, where he had been waiting for Lem for well on to an hour, for he meant to accompany his brother as far as Boon's ford before taking leave. He had sauntered along idly and had reached a point opposite the gap in the spur, where he could look back and view the open trail, when a young badger suddenly ambled out in the path and stood regarding him curiously, with its pink snout working inquiringly. Buddy had no wish for the young badger, but, boy-like, he could not resist shying a rock at it, and at least inspire the creature with some sense of respect.

With a grin, he stepped over toward a spruce log half hidden beneath the foliage of laurel and wild dewberry bushes. As he stooped down and took up a small rock, a sight met his eyes that electrified him, causing him to forget the little animal and to drop the stone as if it had been an ember. In an instant he had his rifle at readiness. The object upon which he had his eyes riveted would never have been detected by a lay mind. But Buddy's little greenish eyes, versed in woodcraft, knew instantly that the two round holes he had glimpsed meant the presence of a shotgun! If there is anything that the mountain-born hates worse than a revenuer, it is a shotgun. They regard this mongrel weapon with a deep, cordial loathing not to be reconciled. The sight of a shotgun in the mountains is always a forerunner of deviltry and treachery.

Bud looked around furtively, then he leaned over and with infinite caution parted the laurel. He recoiled, stung with amazement.

Sap McGill lay close up against the log, with an empty whiskey flask in his relaxed palm! The boy drew back and his brain began to work with great rapidity. The last time he had seen Sap he was tumbled in the road by a bullet at Junction City. McGill was now in ambush; hidden here, bent upon a killing, and had involuntarily fallen into a drunken slumber, overcome by liquor, as evidenced by the empty bottle. Then suddenly Buddy deducted a hypothesis that decided him irrevocably.

McGill could be in waiting for no one other person than his (Buddy's) brother. McGill was hidden here waiting for Lem to come down the trail, when he would rise up and send two loads of buckshot into the back of Lem's head. Buddy's lips tightened fiercely. With a quick, deft movement he reached over and, taking the shotgun by the muzzle, drew it noiselessly out to him. Swiftly he broke the gun, extracted the two sh.e.l.ls and placed them in his pocket. He then carefully replaced the gun in the position he had found it, and stealthily secreted himself behind a boulder less than thirty feet distant. Here he lay down on his stomach with his rifle trained through a crevice, over the spot where McGill lay.

To Buddy's tense nerves the minutes seemed like long hours. He lay so long in this one position, not daring to move to another shelter, that a dull aching began to traverse his arm, which he feared would jeopardize his aim. This was the only position he could command here, where he could see the log held by McGill and at the same time hold a direct aim.

From where Bud lay he could see the open trail through the gap for a distance of fifty yards without stirring.

But for McGill to get a glimpse of the path it was necessary for him to thrust his head far out from his place of concealment. Just at a time when Bud thought that he must surely risk a change in his position, a half-dozen razorbacks trotted up from behind. When they saw Bud lying on the ground in plain view, they uttered a series of affrighted grunts, and dashed ahead, two of them swerved and jumped over the very log that hid McGill, and must have come perilously near to jumping squarely upon him. The next instant McGill's head was thrust stealthfully out of the laurel, his eyes fixed intently on the scrub cedars that jutted out into the trail leading down from the Lutts cabin. As McGill waited to waylay Lem, his life in these minutes hinged upon a seemingly irrelevant and insignificant act.

The moment that McGill broke his gun and discovered that it had been tampered with, he would naturally replace the sh.e.l.ls. And the instant that he replaced the sh.e.l.ls, Buddy Lutts meant to send a rifle ball into his brain.

On the eve of leaving his sequestered haunts in the hills, none but the omniscient Providence could tell for how long, Lem Lutts was loath to turn his eyes toward the blue-gra.s.s country. So it was that he lingered, feasting his gaze upon the panoramic view that lay beneath Eagle Crown, every spur and nook and cove and gulch of which he had been familiar with all his life. With a heaviness weighing his heart, but a determination unabated, he swept his eyes over the purple distance with one last farewell, and turning started his descent. His head had disappeared downward when suddenly, as if in response to a voice, he halted and, not knowing his own purpose precisely, he climbed back and stood up on the ledge, sending his gaze afar to the glistening patch of water that marked the Boon Creek ford; immortalized in his soul, with the last beckonings of her whom he adored with a flaming, compelling, deathless love that eclipsed and obliterated all else in life. His gaze dwelt here for a full minute. Then he turned half-way, then looked quickly back. Something there had attracted him. With his hand half raised, he pushed to the brink of the precipice. He now discerned the burnished coat of a blood-bay horse standing in the ford. Lem's mouth dropped ajar. As he strained his eyes downward, his breath paused with the miraculous thought that slowly filtered into his brain. From this vast, hazy height he could not determine whether the equestrian was male or female. But an exciting intuition seized his senses as he descried some object flashing methodically in the sunlight.

Unmistakably the distant rider was waving to him!

Then the signal changed to something white, flaunting against the azure s.p.a.ce, and Lem's heart smote his ribs with a great bound of suffocating joy, as the influx of a scintillating realization obsessed him, and he started down that perilous descent faster than he had ever gone in his life.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

BELLE-ANN COMES BACK

When he reached the ground he dashed along the trail like a madman. On past the cabin he ran in great bounds; down the cypress cut, his speed increasing every second. As he rushed headlong down into the loop, a startling thing happened.

As Lem shot around a clump of scrub cedars that marked a sharp twist in the trail, the form of a man confronted him with a shotgun leveled at his head. At the same time the ambuscader pulled the trigger with murderous intent. The gun snapped with no report, and the sheer impetus of Lem's body moving at terrific velocity bore him down in a trice. As Lem flashed past, unable to check his headlong speed on the moment, he struck the mystified face a stunning, crashing blow. The man tumbled backward--his head striking a rock with a crushing impact.

It was only when Lem had turned back that he fully established the ident.i.ty of his a.s.sailant, who had started to grow a beard. In his excitement and utter amazement, he had not heard the footsteps behind him. However, he received another shock when he saw Buddy run up to the prostrate McGill and thrust the muzzle of his rifle against the man's side. The infuriated Buddy was on the verge of pulling the trigger when Lem sprang forward and grabbed the rifle out of his brother's hands. The irate boy shot an inquiring look at Lem.

"Warn't he layin' t' kill yo'--hain't I bin watchin' em fo' mo'n a hour?" protested Bud, plainly disgusted with his brother's interference.

"Didn't I break his ole d.a.m.n shotgun when he drinked hisse'f asleep, an'

take his loads out--heah they air--now--now--see?--an' yo' hain't 'lowin' t' kill em?--when he plugged me twict in Junction City?" Buddy shook his head savagely, and glared at the unconscious form lying p.r.o.ne and inert on its back.

"Now yo' jest hol' yore han'," panted Lem. "Sho'--I'm aimin' to kill em, kill em?--I'll kill em twict er three times--I will----" He cast an anxious, wistful look behind him, then ran a dozen yards down the path, turned and plunged crazily back again, and acted like he had suddenly gone daft. He was mumbling muddled words that Buddy could not make out.

Buddy had never before seen his brother in such a confused flurry.

"Sho'--I'll kill em, Buddy," reiterated the fl.u.s.trated Lem, "but I hain't 'lowin' to kill em thes minit--his haid air busted ag'in' that rock--he don't know nothin'--an' I want em to know who kilt em, I do--I want em to see me--I want em to know that Lem Lutts keetched em at last."

"Whut yo' a runnin' roun' like a shot deer fo'?" interrupted Buddy in alarm.

"I want em to know thet he air a payin' in to Lem Lutts fo' all his other divilmint--an' fo' shootin' a boy--yo'--all watch em, Buddy--keep your gun on em when he wakes up, an' don't yo' plug em--hold em 'til I git back--Gawd'll Moughty! I got to go----"

The gravel scattered and there was a rush of feet. Buddy looked around and saw Lem tearing off down the trail like a being distraught, and even faster than he had appeared a few moments since. Nonplussed at his brother's conduct, amazed, he waited sulkily.

With fiery, belligerent eyes Buddy regarded the motionless figure of McGill. The terrible, pitiless hate that seethed and flamed in Buddy's heart for the fallen foe lying on the ground before him had superseded a measure of his natural curiosity concerning his brother's frantic and lightning-like appearance and his sudden and frenzied departure. Lem, in his excitement, had carried Buddy's rifle away, leaving him weaponless.

A thought brought a grim smile to the boy's lips, and a satanic light flitted across his eyes, like the shadow of a bird skimming the ground.

He hurriedly withdrew one of the loaded sh.e.l.ls from his pocket. He would surely now put an end to Sap McGill. A brute of his caliber should have died long, long ago. He would be dead and safely beyond all further deviltry in a few seconds. His eyes burning with the l.u.s.t of this design, Bud reached down to take up McGill's shotgun to reload it, when he heard Lem's distant voice. His words startled Buddy, and arrested his hand.

"Belle-Ann's a comin'--Belle-Ann's a comin'--Belle-Ann's come back,"

echoed back to the boy.

Then it was that the psychological impulse dashed upon little Bud, wrenching out of his mind his intent of manslaughter. His fingers never reached the shotgun. He dropped the loaded sh.e.l.l and, jerking his new hat off, he flung his head back and fairly flew after his brother. With all the might he could muster into his skinny legs, he left the scene of this bloodless encounter behind.

McGill lay face upward. He had not moved a muscle since he fell. The sleepy stillness was broken only by the wild bird voices of the wood. A suspicious catbird dropped down on the end of a log near the silent figure and gave vent to his whining, petulant phrase.

From under the rock upon which McGill's head had struck, the head of a live thing was thrust. Then a long, gorgeous body slid into view. Its sinuous length was embellished with beautiful pigments of gold and black and light canary. With the omnivorous curiosity of the reptile for all inanimate objects, the rattlesnake thrust his mouth, shaped like that of a catfish, up to Sap's ear. The two black rings circling his little incandescent eyes began to swell. The whole surface of his mottled head flattened out and pulsed. He seemed to be breathing through the top of his head. A peculiar half-sound, indescribable, issued forth when the dappled tip of the snake's tail quivered. Like a forked needle his tongue flashed in and out of his throat.

As the rattlesnake's challenge met with utter immobility, he started a thorough inspection. He began at the ear and nosed on down to the feet.

Then he came up on the other side of the unconscious man, back to the starting point. A cloud pa.s.sed, and the sun fell straight down upon the man's face. With a snake's love for radiation the rattler, now apparently satisfied, glided up on McGill's breast. With no sign of life communicating, and finding warmth beneath him, and warmth above him, the rattler coiled himself in a jiffy and lay basking comfortably on McGill's bosom.

At the glad sight that met his eyes, Lem Lutts checked his wild, joy-mad race down toward Boon's ford. He became suddenly and acutely conscious that such a helter-skelter approach did not compare favorably with the beautiful theme of sweet dignity presented ahead of him. Lem now walked moderately to recover his breath and to compose and regain his equipoise. What he saw was a magnificent blood-bay horse flashing like crimson satin in the sunlight, his black mane and tail rippling in the south breeze. The animal lifted his n.o.ble head and emitted a neigh, which utterance was a royal echo from the pasture realms of the Blue-gra.s.s. The horse stopped under a great sycamore tree, where still remained the quaint characters they had cut into its bark in childhood days, when they two were playfellows.

Lem's amazed, staring eyes beheld a lovely girl dismount. She was tall and round, and withal more beautiful than any stretch of his imagination could picture a girl. She was attired in a handsome, modish riding costume, with dainty patent-leather riding boots. She stood now waving a silver-mounted whip as he approached.

"Oh!--Lem!" she dropped her gauntlets, tossed back her ma.s.s of curls and held her hands out to him.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE REUNION

"Belle-Ann!" His voice was husky and quavering. Her hands were closed within his mighty pressure.