"Dorothy," he said, softly, standing close at her side, "I've got ter do somethin' thet ye're goin' ter hate ter hev me ter ondertake--an' yet I knows ye'll want me ter do hit, too."

She wheeled at the tenseness of his voice and he wondered whether some premonition had already foreshadowed his announcement, for her cheeks were pale as she raised her hands and locked her fingers behind his head, standing off at arms' length so that she might look into his face.

He felt the hands tighten and tremble as he explained his mission, and saw the lids close over the eyes as if to shut out pictures of terror-stricken foreboding, while the lips parted stiffly in the pain of repressed and tidal emotions. Dorothy swayed uncertainly on her feet, then recovered self-command.

With a pa.s.sionate impulse of holding him for herself, her arms closed more rigidly about him and her soft body clung against his own, but no sound of sobbing came from her lips and after a little she threw back her head and spoke rapidly, tensely, with the molten fierceness of one mountain-bred:

"I hain't seekin' ter dissuade ye ... I reckon I kinderly egged ye on out thar under ther tree ... but ef any harm comes ter ye, Cal ... over yon ... then afore G.o.d, even ef I'm only a woman ... I'll kill ther man thet causes. .h.i.t!"

It was Dorothy who saddled and bridled the easy-paced mule for the man with the bandaged arm to mount, and who gave him directions for reaching his destination. As he turned in his saddle he summoned the spirit to flash upon her his old smile in farewell and she waved as though she were speeding him on some errand of festival. Then while old Aaron paced the dooryard with a grim face of pessimism bowed low over his chest, she turned into the house and, beside the bed where her lover had so long lain, dropped to her knees and clasped her hands in prayer.

Parish Thornton had told Aaron that he meant to go unarmed to that meeting, but so many thoughts had crowded upon him that only when he settled back against the high cantle of his saddle was he reminded, by its angular hardness, of the pistol which bulged in his pocket.

He drew rein to take it back, then shook his head and rode on again.

"Goin' over an' comin' back," he told himself, "I'd jest as lieve be armed, anyhow. Afore I gits thar I'll climb down an' hide ther thing in some holler log."

Hump Doane's house was larger than many of those lying scattered about it, but between its long walls hung that smoky air of the rudely mediaeval that made a fit setting for so grim a conclave as that of to-day. About the empty hearth of its main room men, uncouthly dressed and unbarbered, sat, and the smoke from their pipes hung stale and heavy. A door at the back and one at the front stood wide, but there were no windows and along the blackened rafters went strings of peppers and "hands" of home-grown tobacco. A dull glint here and there against the walls proclaimed leaning rifles.

On the threshold of the back door sat Bas Rowlett gazing outward, and his physical position, beyond the margin of the group proper, seemed to typify a mental att.i.tude of detachment from those mounting tides of pa.s.sion that held sway within.

"I'm ther feller thet got shot at, men," declared old Jim, rising unsteadily from his chair and sweeping them all with his keen and sagacious old eyes, "an' until terday ye've all stud willin' ter hearken ter my counsel. Now ef ye disregards me an' casts loose afresh all them old hates an' pa.s.sions, I'd a heap ruther be dead then alive."

"Afore G.o.d, what fer do we waste good time hyar cavillin' an' backbitin'

like a pa.s.sel of old granny-women?" demanded Sam Opd.y.k.e whose face was already liquor-flushed, as he came tumultuously to his feet, overturning his chair and lifting clenched fists above his head.

"When this hyar unknowed man come from Virginny ter start things up whar old Burrell Thornton left 'em off at, he brung ther war with him. Thet troublemaker's got ter die--an' when he's dead hit's time ter parley erbout a new truce."

A low growl of approval ran in the throats of the hearers, but Hump Doane rose and spoke with his great head and misshapen shoulders reaching only a little way above the table top, and his thin voice cutting sharp and stridently.

"I've always stood staunch by Jim Rowlett's counsel," he announced, soberly, "but we kain't handily refuse ter see what our own eyes shows us. Ef ther Harpers hed any survigrous leader thet hed come out strong fer peace, I'd still sanction givin' him a chanst, but who hev they got?

I talked solemn with this new man, Parish Thornton, an' I didn't git no satisfaction outen hem."

From the door Bas Rowlett raised an even voice of hypocrisy:

"I knows ther new man better then any of ye, I reckon ... an' I believes him when he says he wants a quiet life ... but I don't skeercely deem ther Harpers hev any notion of heedin' him."

"Men," old Jim, who felt his power slipping from him, and who was too old to seize it back with the vigour of twenty years ago, rose again and in his att.i.tude was the pathos of decayed influence and bitter failure at life's end.

"Men," he implored, "I beseeches ye ter hearken ter me one time more. A man thet's got ter be kilt kin always be kilt, but one thet's dead kain't be fotched back ter life. Hold off this bloodshed fer a spell yit.... Suffer me ter counsel with two or three Harpers an' Thorntons afore ye goes too fur!"

So long had this man's voice held a wizardry of influence that even now, though the spirit of reconciliation had faint life in that meeting, a silence of respect and veneration followed on his words, and while it endured he gazed beseechingly around the group to meet eyes that were all obdurately grim and adverse.

It was Hump Doane who broke the pause.

"Save fer a miracle of luck, Jim, ye'd be a dead man now--an' whilst we tarries fer ye ter parley, you an' me an' others besides us air like ter die. Over-hastiness is a sorry fault--but dilitariness is oftentimes sorrier."

Back in the house that had grown around the nucleus of a revolutionary cabin sat the woman who had been for such a short time a wife--and who might so soon be a widow.

She had risen from her knees at last after agonized praying, but even through her prayers came horrible and persistent pictures of what might be happening to the man who had smiled as he rode away.

The insupportable dread chilled and tortured her that the brief happiness of her marriage had been only a sc.r.a.p and sample, which would leave all the rest of life and widowhood bleaker for its memory and loss.

Dorothy sat by the window with a face ghost-pallid and fingers that wound in and out of spasmodic clutchings.

She closed her eyes in an effort to forget her nightmare imaginings and saw only more fantastic visions of a body sliding from its saddle and lying still in the creek bed trail.

She rose at last and paced the room, but outside in the road her gaze fell on old Aaron who was uneasily pacing, too, and in his drooping shoulders and grimly set face she read no encouragement to hope. That morose and pessimistic figure held her gaze with a fascination of terror and she watched it until its pacing finally carried it around a twist of the road. Then she went out and stood under the tree which in its wordlessness was still a more sympathetic confidant than human beings.

She dropped on her knees there in the long gra.s.s at the roots of the straight-stemmed walnut and for the first time some spark of hope crept into her bruised soul. She began catching at straws of solace and had she known it, placing faith and reliance in the source of all the danger, yet she found a vestige of comfort in the process--and that was something.

"I'd done fergot," she exclaimed as she rose from her knees. "Most like Bas Rowlett's thar--so he'll hev one friend thet men won't skeercely das't ter defy. Bas'll stand by him--like he done afore."

CHAPTER XVIII

Riding with the weariness of a long convalescence, Parish Thornton pa.s.sed the house where for two days only he had made his abode, and turned into an upward-climbing trail, gloomily forested, where the tangle brushed his stirrups as he rode. On a "bald-k.n.o.b" the capriciousness of nature had left the lookout of an untimbered summit, and there he drew rein and gazed down into the basin of a narrow creek-valley a mile distant, where, in a cleared square of farm land, a lazy thread of smoke rose from a low roof.

That house was his objective, and from here on he must drop downward through woods which the eye could penetrate for only a few paces in any direction; where the poison ivy and sumac grew rank and the laurel and rhododendron made entanglements that would have disconcerted a bear. He realized that it was a zone picketed with unseen riflemen, and advisers, who were by no means alarmists, had told him that he could not pa.s.s through it alive. Yet he believed there was the possibility, and upon it he was staking everything, that so long as he rode openly and with the audacity of seemingly nickel-plated self-confidence, these watchers by the way would, in sheer curiosity, pa.s.s him on to those superiors within the house from whom they took their orders.

His life hung on the correctness of that a.s.sumption, but the hazard was a part of the game. He thrust his pistol into a broken oak where a woodp.e.c.k.e.r had nested, then flapped his reins and clucked to his mule.

For the sake of a bold appearance he raised his voice in a spirited and cheerful ballad, but from time to time he broke off since he had stern need for acute listening.

The mule carried him into--and through--a gorge where day-long a shadowy gloom hung among the fern-fringed rocks, and where the austere wildness of dripping cliffs and forbidding woods seemed a stage set for dark and tragic happenings.

He pa.s.sed not one but several rifles as he went--he even caught the glint of one muzzle among the waxen rhododendron leaves but pretended not to see it, and though on him every barrel was trained, not a trigger was pressed.

The coming of a Harper clansman whom some men called a leader to the conclave of the Doane chieftains was so astounding a phenomenon that it would be a pity to cut it short until its intent was made manifest. So the sentinels along the way held their breath--and their fire.

But Thornton came at last to the place where the forest ran out into more open woods and the "trace" widened to a sledge-trail. He drew his horse to a standstill and hallooed loudly, for he knew that at this point all policy of experiment must end. The showdown could no longer be delayed. From near by in the laurel came a prompt voice of response though the speaker remained unseen.

"Halt whar ye're at," it commanded, gruffly. "What does ye want over hyar?"

"I aimed ter hev speech with Hump Doane," answered Thornton, unruffled, counterfeiting a tranquil ease, and from the thicket drifted the unintelligible mingling of two low voices in consultation. Then a second voice spoke:

"Wait right whar ye stands at an' don't aim ter move till I tells ye ye kin."

Punctiliously, Parish Thornton obeyed that injunction, sitting quietly in his saddle with a meditative gaze fixed on the twitching of his mule's ears, until after so long a time a stir in the thicket announced the return of the messenger and a command came succinctly from an invisible speaker.

"Hitch yore critter an' light down. Hump 'lows he'll see ye."