"Fer why does ye say thet?"

Out of Dorothy's wide eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of his treachery against her man.

"I says. .h.i.t," she answered, still in that level, ominously pitched voice that spoke from a heart too profoundly outraged for gusty vehemence, "because, now thet I knows ye, I don't need n.o.body ter fight ye fer me.

He trusts ye an' thinks ye're his friend, an' so long es ye don't lift no finger ter harm him I'm willin' ter let him go on trustin' ye." She paused, and to her ears with a soothing whisper came the rustle of the crisp leaves overhead. Then she resumed, "Ef he ever got any hint of what's come ter pa.s.s terday, I mout es well try ter hold back a flood-tide with a splash-dam es ter hinder him from follerin' atter ye an' trompin' ye in ther dirt like he'd tromple a rattlesnake.... But he stands pledged ter peace an' I don't aim ter bring on no feud war ergin by hevin' him break hit."

"Ef him an' me fell out," admitted Bas with wily encouragement of her confessed belief, "right like others would mix inter hit."

"But ef _I_ kills ye hit won't start no war," she retorted. "A woman's got a right ter defend herself, even hyar."

"Dorothy, I've done told ye I jest lost my head in a swivet of wrath.

Ye're jedgin' me by one minute of frenzy and lookin' over a lifetime of trustiness."

"Ef I kills ye hit won't start no war," she reiterated, implacably, ignoring his interruption, "an' betwixt ther two of us, I'm ther best man--because I'm honest, an' ye're as craven as Judas was when he earned his silver money. Ye needn't hev no fear of my tellin' Cal, but ye've got a right good cause ter fear _me_!"

"All right, then," once more the hypocritical mask of dissimulation fell away and the swarthy face showed black with the savagery of frustration.

"Ef ye won't hev hit no other way, go on disgustin' me--but I warns ye thet ye kain't hold out erginst me. Ther time'll come when ye won't kick an' fly inter tantrums erginst my kisses ... ye'll plum welcome 'em."

"Hit won't be in this world," she declared, fiercely, as her eyes narrowed and the hand that held the knife crept out from under the ap.r.o.n.

The man laughed again.

"Hit'll be right hyar on y'arth," he declared with undiminished self-a.s.surance; "you an' me air meant ter mate tergither like a pair of eagles, an' some day ye're goin' ter come inter my arms of yore own free will. I reckon I kin bide my time twell ye does."

"Eagles don't mate with snakes," she shot out at him, with a bosom heaving to the tempest of her disgust. Then she added: "I don't even caution ye ter stay away from this house. I hain't afeared of ye, an' I don't want Cal ter suspicion nothin'--but don't come hyar too often ...

ye fouls ther air I breathes whenever ye enters. .h.i.t."

She paused and brushed her free arm across her lips in shuddering remembrance of his kiss, then she continued with the tone of finality:

"Now I've told ye what I wanted ter tell ye ... ef need arises ergin, I'm goin' ter kill ye ... this matter lays betwixt me an' you ... an'

n.o.body else hain't agoin' ter be brung inter hit.... Does ye onderstand thet full clear?"

"Thet's agreed," he gave answer, but his voice trembled with pa.s.sion, "an' I've done told _you_ what I wants ye ter know. I loves ye an' I'm goin' ter hev ye. I don't keer no master amount how hit comes ter pa.s.s, but sooner or later I gits me what I goes atter--an' from now on I'm goin' atter _you_."

He turned and walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a frightened child might throw its arms about a protecting mother.

When Sam Opd.y.k.e had been taken from the courtroom to the "jail-house"

that his wrath might cool into submissiveness, and when later he had been held to the grand jury, he knew in his heart that ahead of him lay the prospect of leaving the mountains. The hated lowlands meant to him the penitentiary at Frankfort, and with Jim Rowlett and Parish Thornton united against him, this was his sure prospect.

The two men who had shared with him the sensational notability of that entrance and the deflated drama of that exit had gone home rankling under a chagrin not wholly concerned with the interests of the defendant.

Enmities were planted that day that carried the infection of bitterness toward Harpers and Doanes alike, and the resentful minority began taking thought of new organization; a thought secretly fanned and inflamed by emissaries of the resourceful Bas Rowlett.

Back in the days following on the War of Secession the word Ku Klux had carried a meaning of both terror and authority. It had functioned in the mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the law's failure, and one boasting some colour of legitimacy.

Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of predatory activity and outrage.

Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one began to hear that name "Ku Klux" though it came vaguely from the tongue as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and unmaterial as fox-fire.

But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and some of these shreds of gossip came to Dorothy Thornton over the dooryard fence as pa.s.sersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut.

Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.

She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had gone away on a parlous mission--and it was during that time of his absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into life.

When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.

Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her thoughts ran that old prophecy:

"I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails, likewise will disaster fall upon our house."

CHAPTER XXIV

From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit gone slack.

Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and l.u.s.treless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back comeliness of proportion.

The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small, shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.

Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of malnutrition.

As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:

"Kain't ye, no fashion, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?"

The mother shook her head despondently.

"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," she answered, and the voice which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.

Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-h.e.l.l" that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of the older woman.

This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.

Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other woman go away.

At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were alive.

Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have been a potato patch.

The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the thicket--almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.

But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.

That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the yard.