"Caleb," he said, "through a long lifetime me an' you hev been endurin'

friends. We aims ter go on bein', an albeit I'd done sot my hopes on things thet hain't destined ter come ter pa.s.s, I wishes these young folks joy."

That interview was in the nature of a public announcement, and on the same day at Jake Crabbott's store the conclave discussed it. It was rumoured that the two old champions of peace had differed, though not yet in open rupture, and that the stranger, whose character was untested, was being groomed to stand as t.i.tular leader of the Thorntons and the Harpers. Many Rowlett and Doane faces darkened with foreboding.

"What does Bas say?" questioned some, and the answer was always the same: "Bas hain't a-talkin' none."

But Sim Squires, who was generally accredited with a dislike of Bas Rowlett, was circulating among those Harpers and Thorntons who bore a wilder repute than did old Caleb, and as he talked with them he was stressing the note of resentment that an unknown man from the hated state of Virginia should presume to occupy so responsible a position when others of their own blood and native-born were being overlooked.

One afternoon the girl and her lover sat together in the room where she had nursed him as the western ridges turned to ashy lilac against a sky where the sun was setting in a fanfare of delicate gorgeousness.

That evening hush that early summer knows, between the day's full-throated orchestration and the night song of whippoorwills, held the world in a bated stillness, and the walnut tree stood as unstirring as some age-crowned priest with arms outstretched in evening prayer.

Hand in hand the two sat in the open window. They had been talking of those little things that are such great things to lovers, but over them a silence had fallen through which their hearts talked on without sound.

Slowly the sunset grew brilliant--then the foregrounds gave up their detail in a soft veiling of purple dusk, and the tree between the house and the road became a dark ghost-shape, etched in the unmoving majesty of spread and stature.

"Hit hain't jest a tree," whispered the girl with an awe-touched voice, "hit's _human_--but hit's bigger an' wiser an' stronger then a human body."

The man nodded his head for so it seemed to him, a woodsman to whom trees in their general sense were common things. In this great growth he felt a quality and a presence. Its moods were as varied as those of life itself--as it stood triumphing over decades of vicissitude, blight, and storm.

"I wonder ef hit knows," said the girl, abruptly, "who hit war thet shot ye, Cal?"

The man shook his head and smiled.

"Mebby hit don't jedgmatically _know_," he made answer, seeking as he had often sought before to divert her thoughts from that question and its secret answer: "But so long es. .h.i.t stands guard over us, I reckon no enemy won't skeercely _succeed_."

CHAPTER XIII

The blossom had pa.s.sed from the laurel and rhododendron and the June freshness had freckled into rustiness before the day came when Dorothy Harper and Cal Maggard were to be married, and as yet the man had not been able to walk beyond the threshold of the house, and to the people of the neighbourhood his face had not become familiar.

Once only had Cal been out of doors and that was when leaning on the girl's arm he had gone into the dooryard. Dorothy did not wish the simple ceremony of their marriage to take place indoors, but that when Uncle Jase, the justice of the peace, joined their hands with the words of the simple ritual, they should stand under the shade of the tree which, already hallowed as a monument, should likewise be their altar.

So one afternoon, when the cool breath of evening came between sunset and dusk, they had gone out together and for the first time in daylight he stood by the broad-girthed base of the walnut's mighty bole.

"See thar, Cal," breathed the girl, as she laid reverent fingers upon the trunk where initials and a date had been carved so long ago that now they were sunken and seamed like an old scar.

"Them letters an' dates stands fer ther great-great-great gran'mammy thet wrote ther book--an' fer ther fust Kenneth Thornton. They're our fore-parents, an' they lays buried hyar. Hit's all in ther front pages of thet book upsta'rs in ther chist."

The ground on which they stood was even now, for the mounds so long ago heaped there had been levelled by generations of time. Later members of that house who had pa.s.sed away lay in the small thicket-choked burial ground a hundred yards to the side.

"Hit's a right fantastic notion," complained old Caleb who had come out to join them there, "ter be wedded outdoors under a tree, stid of indoors under a roof," but the girl turned and laid a hand on his arm, and her eyes livened with a glow of feeling and tenderness.

"Hit was right hyar thet we diskivered we loved one another," she said, softly, "an' ef ye'd ever read thet book upstairs I reckon ye'd onderstand. Our foreparents planted this tree hyar in days of sore travail when they'd done come from nigh ter ther ocean-sea at Gin'ral George Washington's behest, an' they plum revered hit from thet time on."

She paused, looking up fondly into the magnificent fulness of branches where now the orioles had hatched their brood and taught the fledglings to fly, then her eyes came back and her voice grew rapt.

"Them revolutionary folk of our own blood bequeathed thet tree ter us--an' we heired hit from 'em along with all thet's good in us. They lays buried thar under hit, an' by now I reckon hits roots don't only rest in ther ground an' rock thet's underneath hit--but in ther graves of our people theirselves. Some part of them hes done pa.s.sed inter thet old tree, I reckon, ter give virtue ter hits sap an' stren'th. Thet's why thar hain't no other place ter be married at."

The July morning of their wedding day dawned fresh and cloudless, and from remote valleys and coves a procession of saddled mounts, ox-carts, and foot travellers, grotesque in their oddly conceived raiment of festivity, set toward the house at the river's bend. They came to look at the bride, whose beauty was a matter of local fame, and for their first inquisitive scrutiny of the stranger who had wooed with such interest-provoking dispatch and upon whom, rumour insisted, was to descend the mantle of clan leadership, albeit his blood was alien.

But the bridegroom himself lay on his bed, the victim of a convalescent's set-back, and it seemed doubtful whether his strength would support him through the ceremony. When he attempted to rise, after a night of returned fever, his muscles refused to obey the mandates of his will, and Uncle Jase Burrell, who had arrived early to make out the license, issued his edict that Cal Maggard must be married in bed.

But at that his patient broke into defiant and open rebellion.

"I aims ter stand upright ter be wed," he scornfully a.s.serted, "ef I don't nuver stand upright ergin! Ask Dorothy an' her gran'pap an' Bas Rowlett ter come in hyar. I wants ter hev speech with 'em all together."

Uncle Jase yielded grudgingly to the stronger will and within a few minutes those who had been summoned appeared.

Bas Rowlett came last, and his face bore the marks of a sleepless night, but he had undertaken a role and he purposed to play it to its end.

In after days, days for which Bas Rowlett was planning now, he meant that every man who looked back on that wedding should remember and say of him: "Bas, he war thar--plum friendly. n.o.body couldn't be a man's enemy an' act ther way Bas acted." In his scheme of conspiracy the art of alibi building was both cornerstone and arch-key.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Even Bas Rowlett, whose nerves were keyed for an ordeal, started and almost let the leaning bridegroom fall_"]

Now it pleased Cal, even at a time when other interests pressed so close and absorbingly, to indulge himself in a grim and sardonic humour. The man who had "hired him killed" and whom in turn he meant to kill stood in the room where he himself lay too weak to rise from his bed, and toward that man he nodded his head.

"Good mornin', Bas," he accosted, and the other replied, "Howdy, Cal."

Then Maggard turned to the others. "This man, Bas Rowlett," he said, "sought to marry Dorothy hisself. Ye all knows thet, yet deespite thet fact when I come hyar a stranger he befriended me, didn't ye, Bas?"

"We spoke ther truth ter one another," concurred Rowlett, wondering uneasily whither the conversational trend was leading, "an' we went on bein' friends."

"An' now afore ye all," Maggard glanced comprehensively about the group, "albeit hit don't need no more attestin', he's goin' ter prove his friendship fer me afresh."

A pause followed, broken finally from the bed.

"I kain't stand up terday--an' without standin' up I couldn't hardly be rightfully wedded--so Bas air agoin' ter support me, and holp me out thar an' hold me upright whilst I says ther words ... hain't ye, Bas?"

The hardly taxed endurance of the conspirator for a moment threatened to break in failure. A hateful scowl was gathering in his eyes as he hesitated and Maggard went on suavely: "Anybody else could do hit fer me--but I've got ther feelin' thet I wants ye, Bas."

"All right," came the low answer. "I'll aim ter convenience ye, Cal."

He turned hastily and left the room, and bending over the bed Uncle Jase produced the marriage license.

"I'll jest fill in these blank places," he announced, briskly, "with ther names of Dorothy Harper an' Cal Maggard an' then we'll be ready fer ther signatures."

But at that Maggard raised an imperative hand in negation.

"No," he said, shortly and categorically, "I aims ter be married by my rightful name--put hit down thar like hit is--Kenneth Parish Thornton--all of hit!"