Part 4 (2/2)

”Waal, now, Phineas Copenny, 't warn't right nor fair ter we-uns ter clumsy it up so,” protested the young mountaineer. ”Ef it hed been the revenuer, I'd hev nare word ter say. I'd smack my lips, fur the deed would taste good ter me, an' I'd stand ter it. But this hyar Mr.

Briscoe--why, we-uns hev not even got a gredge agin him.”

”No, nor n.o.body else that ever I hearn of. Mr. Briscoe war a plum favor_ite_, far an' nigh,” said old Jubal Clenk, the eldest of the party.

”But shucks!” he continued, with a change of tone and the evident intention of preserving harmony among the conspirators. ”'Twar jes' an accident, an' that's what it will pa.s.s fur among folks ginerally. Mr.

Briscoe's mare skeered an' s.h.i.+ed an' backed off'n the bluff--that air whut the country-side will think. Whenst his body is fund his head will be mashed ter a jelly by the fall, an' n.o.body kin say he kem otherwise by his death--jes' an accident in drivin' a skittish horse-critter.”

Whether it was a sound, whether it was a movement, none of the group was accurately aware. It may have been merely that mesmeric influence of an intently concentrated gaze that caused them suddenly to turn. They beheld standing in the road--and they flinched at the sight--a witness to all the proceedings. A small, a simple, object to excite such abject terror as blanched the faces of the group--a little boy, a mere baby, staring at the men with wide blue eyes and unconjecturable emotions. He had doubtless been enveloped in the rug which had fallen from the vehicle as it first careened in the road, and which now lay among the wayside weeds.

His toggery of the juvenile mode made him seem smaller than he really was; his scarlet cloth coat, embroidered in Persian effects, was thick and rendered his figure chubby of aspect; his feet and legs were encased in bulky white leggins; he wore a broad white beaver hat, its crown encircled by a red ribbon, and his infantile jauntiness of attire was infinitely incongruous with the cruel tragedy and his piteous plight.

Although perhaps stunned at first by the shock of the fall, he was obviously uninjured, and stood st.u.r.dily erect and vigilant. He looked alert, inquiring, anxious, resolved into wonder, silently awaiting developments. His eyes s.h.i.+fted from one speaker to another of the strange party.

”Lord! He'll tell it all!” exclaimed Alvin Holvey, appalled and in hopeless dismay.

”Naw, he won't, now,” snarled Copenny rancorously. ”Thar will be a way ter stop his mouth.”

”Why, he is too leetle ter talk. He don't sense nuthin',” cried old Clenk, with an eager note of expostulation, attesting that he was human, after all. ”Don't do nuthin' else rash, Phineas Copenny, fur the love of G.o.d!”

Jubal Clenk dropped on one knee in front of the little boy, and the two were inscrutably eyeing each other at close quarters. ”h.e.l.lo, Bubby!

Whar's yer tongue? Cat got it?” he asked in a grandfatherly fas.h.i.+on, while the other men looked on, grim and anxious, at this effort to gauge the mentality of the child and their consequent danger from him.

Still staring, the little boy began slowly to shake his head in negation.

”What's yer name, Squair? What's yer name?”

But the child still stared silently, either uncomprehending or perceiving that his safety lay in incompetency.

Clenk rose to his feet in sudden relief. ”He don't sense nuthin'! He's too little to talk. He can't tell wuth shucks! We will jes' leave him hyar in the road, an' the folks that find what's down thar in the valley will find him too. I wonder somebody ain't pa.s.sed a'ready. An' sure we-uns oughter be a-travellin'.”

But Holvey revolted against this offhand a.s.sumption of confidence. He made a supplemental effort on his own account. ”Why don't ye tell yer name, Bubby?” he asked cajolingly.

”'Tause,” the child answered abruptly, ”I tan't talk.”

Copenny burst into sudden sardonic laughter, with wondrous little mirth in the tones, and the other miscreants were obviously disconcerted and disconsolate, while the small schemer, whose craft had failed midway, looked affrighted and marvelling from one to another, at a loss to interpret the mischance.

”Dadburn it!” said the mercurial Clenk, as depressed now as a moment earlier he had been easily elated. ”We-uns will jes' hev ter take him along of us an' keep him till he furgits all about it.”

”An' when will ye be sure o' that?” sneered Copenny. ”He is as tricky as a young fox.”

Half stunned by the tremendous import of the tragedy he had witnessed, the child scarcely entered into its true significance in his concern for his own plight. He realized that he was being riven from his friends, his own, and made a feeble outcry and futile resistance, now protesting that he would tell nothing, and now piteously a.s.suring his captors that he could not talk, while they gathered him up in the rug, which covered head and feet, even the flaunting finery of his big, white beaver hat.

In the arms of the grandfatherly Clenk he was carried along the bridle-path in the dulling sunset, and presently dusk was descending on the austere mountain wilderness; the unmeasured darkness began to pervade it, and silence was its tenant. As the party went further and further into the woods, the struggles of the child grew fitful; soon he was still, and at last--for even Care must needs have pity for his callow estate--he was asleep, forgetting in slumber for a time all the horror that he had seen and suffered.

But when he came to himself he was a s.h.i.+vering, whimpering bundle of homesick grief. He wanted his mother--he would listen to naught but a.s.surances that they were going to her right away--right away! It was a strange place wherein he found himself--all dark, save for flaring torches. He could not understand his surroundings, and indeed he did not try. He only rubbed his eyes with his fists and said again and again that he wanted his mother. He was seated on a small stone pillar, a stalagmite in a limestone cavern, where there were many such pillars and pendants of like material hanging from the roof, all most dimly glimpsed in the torch-light against an infinitude of blackness. The men who had brought him hither, and others whom he had not heretofore seen, were busied about a dismantled stone furnace, gathering up such poor belongings as had escaped the wreckings of the revenue force. Now and then a glitter from the fragments of the copper still and the sections of the coils of the worm marked the course their ravages had taken, and all the chill, cavernous air was filled with the sickly odor of singlings and the fermenting mash adhering to the broken staves of the great riven tanks, called the beer-tubs. The moonlight came into this dark place at the further end, for this was one of the many caves among the crags that overhang the Little Tennessee River, and once, looking toward the jagged portal, Archie saw a sail, white in the beams on the l.u.s.trous current, and asked if they were going in that boat to his mother, for, he said, he knew that she did not live in this cellar.

”Yes, yes,” Clenk a.s.sured him. They were making ready to leave now, though not in that boat. ”An' look-a-hyar! What a pretty! Ye kin hev this ter play with ef ye will be good.”

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