The Wiving of Lance Cleaverage

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SHERIFF SCORES

LANCE CLEAVERAGE lay in the cavern above the East Fork of Caney for nearly two weeks. The search for him was persistent, even savage, the reason given being that he had attempted the life of an officer of the law. Flenton Hands had been taken to the house of his kinsman the sheriff, and the bulletins sent out from his bedside were not encouraging; yet Lance's people clung to such hope as they might from the fact that the man was not yet dead.

"No, Flent ain't gone yet," Beason would rumble out when questioned on the subject, "but he's mighty low – mighty low. He's liable to drop off any time; and who'd take Lance Cleaverage then, I'd like to know? Not me. No, nor not any man I've met, so far. The thing for us to do is to git that thar wild hawk of a feller while they's nothing agin him more than assault with intent to kill, or some such. When he smells hemp in the business, he's goin' to make it too dangerous for anybody to go after him, and his folks'll git him out o' them mountains and plumb away to Texas, or Californy."

This it was which, urging haste, gave the hunt its flavor of savagery. The empty cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel had been ransacked again and again; it was known to be watched day and night; the espionage on the house of Kimbro Cleaverage and that of the Gentrys was almost as close. But Callista and Sylvane continually evaded it at night, and kept the fugitive in his cave well provided. In spite of their care, Lance pined visibly. His arm was almost healed; he suffered from no definite bodily ailment, save a low, fretting fever; but his manner was one of heavy languor, broken by random breaths of surface irritability.

Then came a Saturday night when Beason's men, watching a trail, surprised and took Sylvane laden with food and necessaries plainly intended for the man in hiding. They rose up from behind some rocks by the roadside and had the boy in their clutches almost before he knew to be alarmed. It was a raw, gray February evening, drawing in sullenly to night, with a spit of rain in the air, freezing as it fell, stinging the cheek like a whip-lash, numbing toes and fingers. The boy looked desolately up the long road which he had intended to forsake for a safer trail at the next turning. He glanced at his laden mule, and answered at random the volleyed questions flung at him. Finally Beason, heavy, black-bearded, saturnine, silenced them all and opened out, with the dignity of his office,

"Now see here, Sylvanus Cleaverage, these gentlemen with me is sworn officers of the law. We know whar you're a-goin' at, and who you're a-goin' to. They's no use to dodge."

"I ain't a-dodgin'," retorted Sylvane, and in the tilt of his head against the weak light of the western sky one got his full resemblance to Lance. "If you know so mighty well and good right where I was a-goin' at, go thar yo'self," he concluded, desperate, at the end of everything. "What you pesterin' me about it for? With your kind leave I'll turn around and walk myself back home."

"No you won't," Beason countered. "Ain't I told you that we're all officers of the law, and I'm sheriff of this here county, and I aim to do my duty as sworn to perform it? What you got to do is to jest move along in the – in the direction you was a-goin', and lead us to Lance Cleaver-age. You do that, or you'll wish you had."

It was a lack of tact to threaten even this younger one of the Cleaverage boys.

"I'll never do yo' biddin'," Sylvane told him with positiveness, "not this side of the grave. As for makin' me wish I had, you can kill me, but that won't get Buddy for you. He's whar you can't take him. You'll never find him; an' if you did, no ten men could take him whar he's at. An' if I was killed and put out of the way, there's them that would still feed him and carry him the news."

"The good God A'mighty! Who wants to kill you, you fool boy?" demanded Beason testily. "There's been too much killin' did; that's the trouble."

"Oh – Flent's dead then?" inquired Sylvane on a falling note, searching the faces before him in the dusk.

"Will you lead us to whar Lance is at, or will you not?" demanded Beason monotonously, dropping the flimsy pretense that they had any knowledge of the fugitive's hiding place.

"I'll go with you to Pappy," Sylvane compromised. "Whatever Pappy says will be right."

So they all turned and went together to the old Cleaverage place, the boy on his laden mule riding in their midst. They found Kimbro at home sick. He got up, trembling, from his bed and dressed himself.

"Gentlemen," he said to them, appearing in their midst, humbled, broken, but still self-respecting, "I wish my son Lance would surrender himself up to the law – yes, I do. His health is giving way under what he has to endure. But lead you to him I will not, without I first get his consent to do so. If you have a mind to stay here – and if you will give me yo' word of honor not to foller nor watch me, Sheriff Beason – I will go myself and see what he has to say; and I'll come back and tell you."

Beason held a prolonged whispered consultation with his three men. At the end of it he turned and said to the father half surlily,

"Go ahead, I give you my word to neither foller nor watch."

The men sprawled themselves about Roxy Griever's hearthstone, warming luxuriously, dreading to go forth again into the raw February weather. Roxy followed her father to the door.

"Pappy," she pleaded, clinging to his arm. "Hit'll be the death of you to go abroad this-a-way, sick like you air, and all."

"No, Roxana – no, daughter," Kimbro replied, drawing her gently out to the porch, whence they could see Sylvane getting a saddle on to Satan. "I feel as though I might be greatly benefited if only this matter of Lance's can be fixed up. I consider that they trust me more than another when they consent to let me go this way."

Roxy's eye rolled toward the doorway and dwelt upon the officers of the law who were to remain her guests till her father's return. Across her mind came dim visions of heroic biblical women who had offered deadly hospitality to such. Step by step she followed Kimbro to the gate, whispering,

"Don't you git Lance to give himself up, Pappy – don't do it. You tell him Sylvane is a-goin' to fetch extra ammunition from Hepzibah, and if he can hold out till Spring, these fellers is bound to git tired and turn loose the job. He can slip away then; or they'll be wore out, an' ready to make some sort o' terms with the boy."

"Daughter," said the old man, softly, "your brother would be dead before Spring."

"Well, he'll shore die," cried the poor woman, in a sort of piercing whisper, "ef they take him down to jail in the settlement. Pappy, you know Lance ain't never goin' to live —in the jail!"

And Kimbro left her sobbing at the gate, as he rode away on the black horse, his frail, drooping figure a pathetic contrast to the young animal's mettlesome eagerness.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ISLAND AT LAST

AFTER his father left him, Lance slept, the sleep of a condemned and shriven man, long and deep and dreamless, the first sound rest his tortured nerves and flagging powers had known since the night in Hepzibah.

Kimbro Cleaverage – following Sylvane's directions – had come without difficulty to his son's cave hide-out, arriving at about eleven o'clock. He found Lance sitting wakeful by the fire, the gay folds of the gospel quilt over his knees, played upon by the shimmer and shine of the leaping blaze. The young man's fever-bright gaze was directed with absorbed attention toward his work. He was delicately snipping loose ends with the shears, while a threaded needle was stuck in the lapel of his coat. He had taken the scarlet calico and cut from it a series of tiny Greek crosses, beautifully exact and deftly grouped and related so as to form a border around the entire square. With that sense of decorative effect which was denied his sister, he had set these so that the interplay of red and white pleased the eye, and almost redeemed the archaic absurdities of the quilt itself. Skilled with the needle as a woman, he had basted the last cross in place when his father entered.

The talk which followed, there in that subterranean atmosphere that is neither out-nor in-door, neither dark nor light, was long and earnest. Kimbro spoke freely, and there was always that in his father which took Lance by the throat. Perhaps it was the entire lack of accusation; perhaps something in the old man's personality that appealed with its tale of struggle and failure, its frank revelation of patiently borne defeat.

"I'll go right back with you, Pappy, if you say so," Lance murmured huskily at the last, looking up into the gray old face above him like the child he had used to be. "As well now as any time."

"No, son," said Kimbro slowly. His heart ached with the cry, "The Lord knows there ain't no such hurry – there'll be time enough afterward!" But his habit of gentle stoicism prevailed, and he only paused a little, then added, "I reckon we better not do that – I reckon we couldn't very well. I rode the black nag pretty hard coming up. The going's heavy. He couldn't carry us both back, not in any sort of time; and nary one of us is fit to make it afoot. No, I'll take the word to Beason, and him and his men will likely stay at our house till in the morning – poor Roxy! Sylvane'll ride the mule up here tol'able early, and lead your horse. You go straight home. Beason and his men can come for you to your house. Will that suit?"

"Hit'll suit" Lance answered.

There was along silence between the two. Then the old man moved to the cave's mouth. "Farewell," he said, and stood hesitating, his back to his son.

Lance followed his father a few halting paces, carrying a chunk of fire, lighting the old man down the bank.

"Farewell, Pappy," he echoed.

"All right, son," came back the faint hail, then after a moment's silence Kimbro's voice added, "Thank you for sending this word by me. Farewell," and there was the sound of his footsteps moving on down the little valley.

Probably six hours later, Lance wakened and lay looking at the embers; he reached out a languid hand to push a brand in place. Presently he rose and built up the smoldering fire, and thereafter sat beside it, head on hand, his hollow eyes studying the coals. His father was gone back to notify the sheriff. Well, that was right – a man must answer for the thing he did; and they said that Flenton Hands was dead. He was not consciously glad of this – nor regretful; he was only very weary, spent and at the end of everything. How could he have done otherwise than he had done? And yet – and yet —

His mind went back the long way to his wooing of Callista. What a flowery path it was to lead to such a bleak conclusion! Then once more his thought veered, like the light shifting smoke above the fire, to Hands. They'd hardly hang him for the killing. It was not a murder. There were those who would testify as to what his provocation had been. But it would mean his days shut away from the sun; a disgraced name to hand down to his boy.

For no reason which he could have given, the sound of a banjo whispered in his memory, "How many miles, how many years?" Ah, the miles and the years then! Callista would be free – and that would be right, too. He had no call to cling to her and claim her. She had never been his, never – never – never! An inconsequent vision of her face lying on his breast the night he had climbed the wild grapevine to her window came mockingly back to tantalize him. He stirred uneasily, and reached to lay another chunk in place, mutely answering the recollection back again – she had never been his.

Then suddenly his head lifted with a start; there was the noise of a rolling stone outside, a thrashing of the bushes, a rush of hurrying feet, and even before he could spring up Callista was in the cave.

But not any Callista Lance had ever known; not the scornful beauty who throned herself among her mates and accepted the homage of mankind as her due; not the flushed, tremulous Callista of that never-to-be-forgotten night at the window. This was not the young wife of the earlier married days – least of all the mother of his son, or the kindly friend, the stanch partner, who had tended on and served him here in the cave. This was a strange, fierce, half-distraught, shining-eyed Callista, a fit adventurer, if she list, to put forth toward his island. A little dark shawl was tied over her bright head; but from under its confining edges the fair locks, usually so ordered and placid, streamed loosely around the face which looked out white and fearful. Her dress was soaked about the edges and all up one side. It was stained with earth, there, too, ripped loose from the waist, and torn till it hung in long, streaming shreads. A deep scratch across her cheek bled unheeded, and a flying strand of hair had glued fast in it. Her shaking hands were bleeding too, and grimed with woods mold, her finger nails were packed with it, where she had fallen again and again and scrambled up. She walked staggeringly and breathed in gasps.

"They – " she panted, then took two or three laboring breaths before she could go on. "They told me at Father Cleaverage's that they was goin' to send here and fetch you in – is that so?"

"I reckon they are," the man beside the fire assented nervelessly.

A wild look lightened over her face. She came stumblingly up to him.

"Lance!" she choked. "Did you sure enough send that word by your father to the sheriff? – Did you say you'd give up and go in – did you?"

"Yes," he returned somberly. "I did, Callista. That's all that was left me."

"My God!" she breathed. "And I couldn't believe it – not a word of it. But I just slipped out and come. I've got Gran'pappy's horse Maje and the Mandy mule tied down in the bushes below there, and – "

Cleaverage glanced about him and, rising, began to roll together the blankets of his bed.

"Yes," he repeated, in a sort of automatic fashion. "Pappy left me before midnight, and he was riding Satan. I reckon I ought to be moving right soon now. It must be sun-up outside, ain't it?"

She looked at him with desperate doubt.

"Lance!" she demanded, clutching his arm with her trembling hand. "What made you send Father Cleaverage with such word as that? – and never let me know! – Oh, Lance, what did you do it for? Bring them things and come on down quick. There may be time yet."

He stared at her dumbly questioning for a moment. Long misery had made his wits slow. He plainly hesitated between thinking her the emissary sent from home for him and the understanding that she wanted him to escape.

"Time?" he repeated. "Do you mean – ?"

Her lips shaped "yes," her eyes fastened upon his face.

He took it very quietly. Slowly he shook his head.

"I ain't got any right to do that," he said. "I've given my word to Pappy. They'd hold him for it. And if I did go, I'd be running and hiding the balance o' my days. You and the boy would be lost to me – same as you will be as it is. And – and you wouldn't be free. I done the thing. Let me take my punishment like a man, Callista. Oh, for God's sake," he cried out with a sudden sharp cry, "let me do something like a man! I've played the fool boy long enough."

He dropped back into a sitting posture beside the fire. Callista had never released his arm. It was plain that his attitude frightened her more terribly than any violence of resistance would have done. She bent over him now in the tremulous intensity of her purpose, whispering, the low pleading of her voice still interrupted with little gasps.

"You're broke down living this-a-way. Lance. You don't know your own mind – you ain't fit to speak for yourself."

"Oh, Callista," said Lance's quiet tones, "I'm a sight fitter to speak for myself now than I ever was before in my life. I've got it to do."

Up to this time, the trouble between these two had continued to be a lovers' quarrel. Leaving Lance alone in the house he had builded for her, throwing back into his face such help as he would have followed her with, Callista had but triumphed as she used to when they bickered before an audience of their mates. Angry as she actually was when she broke with him, there could not fail, also, to be a cruel satisfaction in the knowledge of how she put him from his ordinary, how she changed the course of his life, and knew him her pining lover, the man who could not sleep o' nights for thought of her. Perhaps, when his pride was broken, and he came suing to her, personally, she would go home with him and patch the matter up with patronage and forgiveness. From the first this expected consummation had been vaguely shadowed in her mind back of all she did or refused to do. Here and now was the matter sharply taken out of her hands. Lance turned his back on her. He reckoned without her. He promised to others that which would set him at once and permanently beyond her recall. With an impassioned gesture, she flung herself down on her knees before him where he sat. Her arms went around him, her face was pressed against him.

"No, no. Lance," she implored. "You might speak for yourself – but who's to speak for me? What'll I do when they take you from me? I'd sooner hide like a wild varmint all my days. I'd sooner – oh, come on and go with me, Lance. I'll run with you as long as we both live."

"That wouldn't be a fit life for you and the baby," Lance told her.

"The baby!" replied Callista, almost scornfully. "I didn't aim to take him along. It's you and me, Lance – you and me."

Gazing up at him, she saw the look in her husband's face; she saw that his thoughts were clearing, and that the resolute, formulated negative was coming.

"Oh, don't say it, Lance!" she cried, her arms tightening convulsively around his body, the tears streaming down her lifted face, washing away the blood. A great coughing sob shook her from head to foot. "Oh, Lance, don't – don't do it! I know – " she hastened pitifully – "I know I haven't got any rights. I know I've wore out your love. But oh, please, honey, come with me and let's run."

Through the man's dazed senses the truth had made its way at last. He sat wonder-smitten. The weeping woman on her knees before him looking up into his face, with eyes from which the veil of pride and indifference was rent away, eyes out of which the sheer, hungry, unashamed adoration gazed.

"Lance," she began at last, in a voice that was scarce more than a breath, a mere shadow of sound, "I've never told you. Look like I always waited for you to say. But since – long ago – ever since you and me was boy and girl – and girl together – They was never anybody for me but you – you, dear. They's nothing you could do or be that would make it different. I – my heart – If they take you away from me, Lance, darlin', they might just as well kill me."

Lance reached around and got the two hands that were clinging to him so frantically. He held them, one over the other, in his own and, bending his head, kissed them again and again. He touched the loose hair about her forehead, then mutely laid his lips against its fairness. He lifted his head and looked long into her eyes with a look which she could not understand.

"You – you're a-comin', Lance?" she breathed.

He shook his head ever so little.

"Callista," he said very softly, and the name was a caress, – "mine – my girl – my Callista, you're a-goin' to help me do the right thing."

She started back a little; she caught her breath, and her blue eyes dilated upon him.

"The right thing," her husband repeated, with something that was almost a smile on his lips. "And that's to ride over home and give myself up. God bless you, dear, I can do it now with a quiet mind. Oh, Callista – Callista – I'm happier this minute than I ever was before in my life! Whatever comes, I can face it now."

Callista crouched with parted lips and desperate eyes. About them there was silence, broken only by the tiny sibilations of the fire, the hushed voice of the night wind muttering in the outer chamber of the cave, as the air sighs through the open lips of a sea-shell. Her ear was against his breast; with a sort of creeping terror she heard the even beating of his heart. He could say such words quietly! An awful sense of powerlessness gripped her. Lance was arbiter of his own fate. If he chose, he could do this thing. She was like one who waits, the flood at her lips, while the inevitable death rises slowly to engulf. Then it was as if the waters closed above her. With a whispered cry she settled forward against him, and rested so, held close in his embrace. Little shivers went over her lax body. She uttered brief, broken murmurs. Down and down she sank in the arms that clasped her. Lance bent his head to hear.

"Well – if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine – oh, the fault was mine!"

"We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on, darlin', I've got to make good my word."

Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved silently about the cave and, without any further word of remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks.