The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

CHAPTER XXIV.

SILENCED

UP the street tramped the two young fellows, Lance silent, pulling his hat down over his face, Fuson whistling in an absent, tuneless fashion. When they came to the store, Buck paused and gave the instructions.

"I'll go in. You walk a-past two or three times, and when you see me standin' with my back to you and my hands behind me, that'll mean that Flenton's thar and the talk started. Hit'll be yo' time to come in."

Lance nodded without a word. He passed the lighted doorway. Beyond it was a butcher shop – for days after he could remember the odor of raw meat from the place, the sight of the carcasses hung up in the frosty winter air. At the corner he turned and walked back. There was no sign of Fuson as he glanced swiftly into the store. On the other side of the way was the vacant lot where he had instructed the boy from the wagon-yard to tie Satan. Lance took the precaution to go down in the shadows and see if the black horse had arrived. He found his mount, the bridle rein looped over a bit of scrubby bush. He examined the saddle and equipments, and found all as it should be. When he came back to the store door and once more glanced in, he descried Fuson's figure, standing, hands behind the back, in the aisle between the counters.

Quietly, neither hiding nor displaying himself, Lance entered and made his way down the long room toward the far lighted end. After dark, trade in the main portion of the store was practically dead, and only one smoky lamp on the counter illuminated the entrance. In the rear, half-a-dozen men were grouped around a big, rust-red barrel stove, talking. The whole place back there reeked with the odors of whiskey, of the fiery, colorless applejack that comes down from the mountains, kerosene and molasses, with a softening blend from the calico, jeans and unbleached cottons heaped on the counters, narrowing in the approach to this retreat. He paused beside a tall pile of outing flannel, putting up one hand against the rounded edges of their bolts. Fuson, glancing over his shoulder, was aware of the figure in the shadow, and at once spoke in a slightly raised voice.

"Flent, I hear you've sold yo' filly."

"Well, then, you hearn a lie," returned Flenton Hands's tones drawlingly. "I hain't sold that filly, and I'm not aimin' to. That thar nag belongs to my wife."

He laughed uproariously at his own jest, and some of the other men laughed too. Greene Stribling, down from Big Turkey Track to do a bit of trading, had sold a shoat. Instead of getting the coffee and calico and long sweetening it should have purchased, and carrying them, with the remaining money, up to his toil-worn mother and younger brothers and sisters, he had bought a jug of the Derf & Hands wildcat whiskey; and having borrowed the small tin cup from beside the water bucket, he was standing treat to the crowd.

"Fust time I ever heared you had an old woman," Derf said, accepting the cup from the assiduous Stribling.

It was evident, now that Lance had a view of the faces, that this was a Flenton Hands nobody on Turkey Track Mountain ever met. He had, as it were, come out into the open. Certainly he was not drunk; it would have taken a very considerable amount of stimulant to intoxicate that heavy, dense spirit and mentality; but there was color in his cheek, a glint of courage in his pale eye, a warming and freeing of the whole personality, that bore witness to what he had been drinking.

"I reckon you mean the wife that you're a-goin' to have," put in Fuson. "Hit's a good thing to git the pesky old stags like you married off. They have the name of breakin' up families. Bein' a settled man myself in these days, I ain't got no use for such."

Hands turned on him eagerly.

"Well, I have shore broke up one family," he declared. "I am a church member and a man that keeps the law; but that thar is a thing I'm not ashamed of."

"Yet I reckon you ain't a-braggin' about it," suggested Buck.

"I don't know as I'm braggin' about it, but I shore ain't denyin' it," maintained Hands. "I'm ready to tell any person that will listen at me that me an' Callista Gentry aims – "

"I'm a-listenin'," said a quiet voice from the shadows, and Lance stepped into the circle, clear-eyed, alert, but without any air of having come to quarrel.

For a moment Flenton quailed. Then he looked about him. This was not the wild Turkey Tracks. He was down in the Settlement. There was law and order here. He had a peace warrant out against this man Cleaverage. He glanced across at his cousin, the sheriff. Beason would back him. Why, he was a deputy sheriff himself, and the feeling of the gun in his pocket reassured him. Lance stood at ease, composed, but definitely changed from the light-footed Lance who had come swinging buoyantly down over the little hill that Sunday morning two years ago. Something told Hands that the other was unarmed.

"Now see here, Cleaverage," he began, wagging his head and backing off a little, "I don't want to hurt your feelin's. I may have said to friends, and it may have got round to you, that the part you had did by – that the part you had did was not to your credit. She – "

He hesitated. There was silence, and no one stirred. He went on.

"She's a-workin' for her livin', and a-workin' mighty hard. She's a-supportin' the child. Divo'ces can be had for such as that – you know they can."

"That isn't what I heard you say – what you said you would tell anyone that'd listen," argued Lance, his eyes fixed unwaveringly upon the other. "You've got to take back all that other talk, here before them you said it to. Hit's a pack o' lies. I'm goin' to make you take it back, and beg pardon for it on your knees, Flenton Hands – on your knees, do you hear me?"

The circle of men widened, each retiring inconspicuously, with apprehensive glance toward a clear exit for himself. The two opponents were left in the center of the floor, confronted, their faces glared upon by lamp-shine and the light from the open door of the stove; drawn by passionate hate, and with a creeping terror much more dangerous beginning to show itself in the countenance of the older man.

"You wasn't never fitten for her," Hands cried out finally, his voice rising almost to falsetto with excitement. "She's glad to be shut of you." Then like a fellow making a desperate leap, half in fright, half in bravado, "When her and me is wedded – "

He broke off, staring with open mouth. Lance had scarcely moved at all, yet the crouching posture of his figure had something deadly in it. Flenton's clumsy right hand went back toward the pocket where that gun lay. With the motion, Lance left the floor like a missile, springing at his adversary and pinning his arms down to his sides. It was done in silence.

"Hold on thar!" cried Derf in alarm. "You-all boys better not git to fightin' in my store. Sheriff! – hey, you, Beason! – Why don't you arrest that feller?"

The two wrestled mutely in that constricted place. Hands struggling to get his pistol out, Lance merely restraining him. Beason came forward, watching his chance and grabbing for Cleaverage. He finally caught Lance's arm, and his jerk tore loose the young fellow's grip on Flenton Hands. Swiftly Lance turned, and with a swinging blow freed himself, sending the unprepared sheriff to the floor. As he flung his head up again, he had sight of Hands with a half-drawn weapon. Flenton backed away and stumbled against the stove. The great iron barrel trembled – toppled – heaved, crashing over, sending forth an outgush of incandescent coals, its pipe coming down with a mighty, hollow rattle and a profuse peppering of soot. The strangling smoke was everywhere.

"Name o' God, boys!" yelled Derf, climbing to the counter, to get at a bunch of great shovels that hung on the wall above; "you'll set this place afire! Flent, you fool, we ain't got a dollar of insurance!"

At the moment Lance closed with his man, locked him in a grip like a vise, went down with him, and rolled among the glowing cinders, conscious of a sudden burning pang along the left arm which was under him.

Fuson, watching Hands strain and writhe to draw the pistol, and Lance's effort to prevent him, saw that it was going against his friend. He thrust the haft of a knife into Lance's right hand.

The men were jumping about ineffectually, coughing and choking with the sulphurous fumes, divided between the fascination of that struggle on the floor, and the half-hearted effort to upend the stove by means of a piece of plank. The corner of a cracker box began to blaze.

"Lord God A'mighty!" Derf was protesting, threshing at the burning goods, "We'll be plumb ruined!" Fuson ran for the water bucket. Some fool dashed a cup of whiskey on the coals, and in the ghastly light of the blue blaze. Lance Cleaverage, staggering up, saw a dead man at his feet.

He was not conscious that he had struck at all with the knife, yet there it was in his hand, red. The sleeve was half burned off his left arm, and still smoking. It was dark away from the fire. Beason, stunned, was getting to his feet and hallooing,

"Hold Cleaverage! Somebody hold Cleaverage! He's killed Flent."

And then Lance felt the shoving of a palm against his shoulder. Buck was pushing him quietly away, down between the lines of piled commodities. They were running together toward Satan. Back in the room they could hear the sheriff yelling for lights.

"I thought I might just as well knock them lamps over for good measure," Fuson muttered as they ran. "Here's your horse – my pistol's in that holster, Lance. Air ye hurt?"

"No," Lance returned. "Nothin' but my arm. I reckon I burnt it a little. It's only the left one. Thank you. Buck. You've been a true friend to me this night."

And he was away, down the bit of lamplit street that ran so quickly into country road, past outlying cabins already dark, till he struck the first rise of Turkey Track and slacked rein. A moment he turned, looking over his shoulder at the lights.

Upon the instant the Court House bell back there broke out in loud, frightened clamor.

"Clang! Clang! Clang!" Somebody was pulling wildly on the rope to call out the little volunteer fire company. He heard cries, shouts, and then the long wavering halloo that shakes the heart of the village dweller.

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

Derf's store must be blazing. He wondered dully if they had dragged Flenton's body away from the flames. Hearkening, he suffered Satan to breathe a bit on the rise that would take him to the great boulder where the roads branched, one going up Little Turkey Track, the other leading aside direct to the Big Turkey Track neighborhood.

Suddenly he stiffened in his saddle, cut short a groan wrenched from him by his injury, and listened strainingly. Above the now diminishing noise from the village, he distinguished the sound of hoofs that galloped hard, growing louder with each moment, – the feet of one who pursued him. Looping the bridle rein over the pommel of his saddle horn, he got at the pistol Buck had provided, and thereafter rode warily but as rapidly as he dared, looking back to catch the first glimpse of the shape or shapes which might be following.

He had just rounded the turn at the fork of the way, when somebody burst into it close at hand, coming through the short cut by Cawthorne's Gulch, and he thought he heard his name called.

To be taken now, to be dragged back to the jail, and, if not set upon and lynched by the Beason-Hands following, to rot there till such time as they chose to try him, and possibly pay for his act of wild justice with his own life, this was a vista intolerable to Lance Cleaverage. Raising the weapon he fired at his pursuer.

"Oh, don't!" wailed the unseen; and the next moment Sylvane leaped from the mule he rode, ran forward and caught at Satan's mane, panting, "Lance – Lance! I was a-goin' to you as fast as I could. I struck down thar 'bout the time you must have left. I come Dry Valley way. Is it – have you – "

At the sound of Sylvane's voice, the heritage of Cain came home to Lance Cleaverage. A great upwelling black horror of himself flowed in on the fugitive. To what had he sunk! A murderer fleeing for his life, in his panic terror of pursuit menacing his own brother who came to help and succor!

"Oh, Buddy – Buddy – Buddy!" he cried, doubling forward over the pommel of his saddle, clutching Sylvane's shoulder, and closing his eyes to shut out the face of the dead man which swam before them in that quivering blue light.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE FLIGHT

THE dark hours of that January night saw the two brothers riding hard up into the mountains toward that tiny cleft in the peaks above East Caney where Lance now remembered the cave that he had once said should shelter him in case he ever killed a man. Sylvane had much of Lance's pride and courage, with little of his dash and perversity. Had the peril been his own, one might have guessed that he would meet it with the gentle stoicism old Kimbro showed. But that Buddy should be in peril, fleeing for his life! The boy's universe reeled around him, confusion reigned where he should have been efficient and orderly; and when they stopped at the cabin in the Gap for supplies, what with the agony of Lance's burn and the disarray of his brother's whole mentality, they made sad work of it. Something to eat, something to keep warm with, something to dress the hurt – these were the things the boy tried to remember, and forgot, and could not find, when he fancied the galloping hoofs of pursuers with every gust that shook the big trees in the dooryard.

He got for the dressing of the arm only a roll of new cloth, rough and unsuitable; while a few extra garments, a blanket, meat, meal, salt, a cooking vessel and some white beans made up the rest of his packet. He came out at the last carrying Lance's banjo and put it on top of the supplies.

"'Way up yon they'll be nobody to hear you, and I reckon it might take off the edge of the lonesomeness," he half apologized when Lance looked curiously at it in the light of the lantern his brother held.

The owner of the banjo made no movement to take it and swing it upon his back, neither did he decline it; but indifferently Sylvane was allowed to bring the once cherished possession along.

Through the cold, naked woods, they pushed to East Caney. The creek was up. It was three o'clock, nearly four hours before the wintry dawn might be expected; yet a late moon had risen sufficiently to show them the swollen torrent. These mountain streams, fed by the snows of the higher ranges, clear, cold, boulder checked and fretted, sometimes rise in a night to a fury of destruction, scouring away whole areas from one bank or another. To-night Caney, great with the snows from both of the twin peaks above it which a January thaw had sent down, made traveling in its bed a matter of life and death. Yet the boys must attempt it. Once behind that barrier of roaring water, Lance would be safe. True, mountain streams often subside as abruptly as they rise, so that no one could tell how long this particular safety would last.

"I reckon we can git through better 'n the nags," Sylvane said dubiously, as they divided the pack between them, and started out on the desperate enterprise of leaping from boulder to boulder through the swirling waters. They lost one bundle in the struggle, and they came through fearfully exhausted. Lance with that left arm one surface of exquisite torture, his countenance pinched and his jaw set, his eyes burning in the white face that his brother could dimly discern. But they did get through, and came drenched, dripping, shuddering with cold, into the little valley.

The last time Lance had seen the place it was brimmed with the wine of summer, green, full of elusive forest scents, bird-haunted, drowsing under July sides, and the most beautiful creatures it held in its sweet shelter were Callista and her child. Now his desolate gaze searched its dim obscurity for the black loom of the rock house that had given its roof to their happy gipsying. The blanket and clothing had gone down roaring Caney; but the banjo, carried carefully on Sylvane's shoulders, whined against the bare twigs of the Judas tree he was passing under, whimpered something in its twanging undertone that demanded awfully of Lance, "How many miles – how many years?"

Without waiting for his brother, and the lantern which the boy was relighting, he dashed down the slope, past the stark, empty rock house – swerving a little like a man going wide of an open grave – and gained the steep pathway to the cave, where Sylvane, panting after, overtook him.

"I'm obliged to get a fire for you, and see can I tie up that there arm," the boy declared pitifully. "Lance, I'm that sorry I lost your blanket and clothes that I don't know what to do!" And his voice trembled.

"It don't make any difference about me," Lance said wearily. "I'd like for you to be dry and warm before you start back – but there's no time. You got to get away from here as quick as you can. If we leave the horses tied down there, and anybody sees 'em – you've got to get away quick, Buddy."

"Where'd I better take Sate?" asked Sylvane, as he had asked before.

"I've been studyin' about that," Lance told him. "They're bound to know I'm in the mountains. We can't get rid of the nag, and if he goes to our house it will seem no more than natural. Best just take him home and put him in the stable."

Sylvane had gathered pitch pine for light and heat. He made a roaring fire and then attempted an awkward dressing of the injured arm. The rough cloths hurt. There was no liniment, not even flour to lay on the burn. Lance locked his teeth in agony and bore it till time seemed to press.

"Go on, Buddy," he urged. "When you can get to me with anything, do it. When you can't – I'll make out, somehow."

"The good God knows I hate to leave you like this," the lad repeated, as he made his final preparations for departure. "Pappy or me will be here inside of two days and bring you news, and something to keep warm with, and something to eat. Lance, please lemme leave ye my coat – "

"No, no, Sylvane, you'd nigh about freeze without it a-ridin' home. It's not cold in the cave here. You go on now, Buddy – that's a good boy." And blindly the younger lad turned and crept down the bank.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ROXY GRIEVER

IT was nearly noon when Sylvane, reaching home by an obscure, roundabout trail, half perished from the cold, scouting the place long and fearfully before he dared enter, found that Sheriff Beason with a posse had been at his father's house, searched it, and gone. At the door his sister Roxy met him, clutching his arm, staring over his shoulder with fear-dilated eyes, and whispering huskily,

"Whar is he? Whar's Lance?"

The boy shook his head, pulling the drenched hat from his curls, and moving toward the hearth-stone where his father sat bowed over.

"He's safe," the words came finally in a half-reluctant tone. New lines of resolution and manhood's bitter knowledge had been graving themselves on Sylvane's face the past twenty-four hours. "I helped him to whar they cain't find him nor take him. Let that be enough."

"No – but it ain't enough," his sister rebelled. "Here's Beason has swore him in a posse of six, and he's out a-rakin' the mountings after Lance. Six men." Roxy's face was gray.

"They've started, have they?" said Sylvane in the voice of exhaustion. "Well, what you don't know they cain't find out from you, Sis' Roxy. And I best not tell you whar Lance is hid."

"Sylvane!" The woman's tone was sharp with suffering, rather than anger. "Do you think I'd tell on my own brother? Tham men might cut me into inch pieces and get nothin' from me. You don't know me, boy. I'd think little of puttin' one of 'em out of the way! Thar was women in the Bible done sech – and was praised for hit. I want to know whar Lance is at," she choked, "and whether he's hurt, and what he's got for to comfort him – pore soul!"

"Hush, daughter," counselled Kimbro gently. "Sylvanus is right. People do sometimes betray what they aim to cover up. If I can guess whar my son is – and I reckon I could – that's one thing; but for any of us to be told, ain't safe."

Silently, almost sullenly, Roxy hunted out dry clothes for Sylvane, the boy sitting near his father, telling Kimbro in a few brief sentences Lance's version of the night's happenings, the old man nodding his head without a word of comment. She set food on the table and Sylvane drew up to eat.

"I want to go whar my Unc' Lance is at," whispered Mary Ann Martha, suddenly pushing a tow head up under Sylvane's arm and nearly causing him to overturn his coffee. "I'm a-goin' to he'p him fight."

Sylvane lifted the child into his lap, and began to feed her with bits from his plate.

"Its Unc' Lance is all right, Pretty," he said absently. "Unc' Sylvane and Gran'pappy'll look after him. That's men's work. It help its Mammy to keep the house, and soon Unc' Lance is goin' to be back and play the banjo for it."

All day, that strange, brief, silent Sunday in February, Roxy strove to have the secret of Lance's hiding place from her younger brother. Again and again she turned from what she was doing to demand it of him; more than once she quit abruptly her labors about the house, to go and hunt him up, to ask him sometimes half-angrily, sometimes cajolingly, pleadingly, almost with tears. The boy withstood the fire of her importunities as best he could. He answered her in as few words as might be. Without harshness, but only doggedly, he still responded in the negative, and always with mildness and a sort of regret.

As it drew toward dusk, Roxy's face began to harden into grim lines, and she went about her preparations for supper with a gleaming eye. Her father, who had walked to a far pasture to salt cattle, came in, and sat with Mary Ann Martha on his knee by the fireplace. Roxy looked in at the door. Mutely, with only a backward jerk of the head, she called them to their meal. As the child was following, her mother detained her and, giving no explanation, went with her into the far room. A moment later she came to the men sitting at the table.

"Well, there's yo' supper," she said resentfully to Sylvane, "sence you 'low that's all I'm fitten to do. Ye can put the things away yo'selves, I reckon. I'm a-goin' on a arrant."

And with the chubby Mary Ann Martha bundled heavily in shawls, silent as a small mummy, and plainly under the hypnotism of impressive instructions from her mother, she turned and went from the room, and they heard the front door close softly after her.