The Code of the Mountains

"I knows what I'm atter. I knows who I'm ergwine ter git. Thar's a feller I'm ergwine ter kill." The unforgiving malice in the boy's eyes, the rigid posture of his whole body as he stood contemplating his enemy, told Red Newton the whole story. This, then, was the man Newt meant to kill. It was logical enough. This was the witness who had riddled the alibi.

At first, Red Newton shrugged his shoulders in the fashion of one who has no call to meddle in the affairs of others, but as fresh aspects of the matter presented themselves to his consideration, a very real danger to all his family arose to confront him.

If Newt should shoot Henry Falkins on the streets of Winchester before the speaking of this afternoon, it would stir into action such a tidal wave of public indignation against the mountaineers that the more vital conspiracy would be thwarted. He surmised that Newt was rushing back to Cawsler's place to arm himself, and his first instinct was to follow. Then he remembered that the place was now empty save for the drunken Dode, and Cawsler himself, whose discretion could be trusted. So, he took no action, and, when later the same buggy passed the court-house and within a few moments Newt went swinging along after it on foot, the disappointed face of the boy told the other that he had failed. Red Newton rubbed his stubbled chin reflectively, bit off a large chew of tobacco and withdrew into his inner consciousness for reflection. As the result of those cogitations he strolled over to the hitching rack where he found a lowland farmer with whom he had spent a part of the morning talking cattle.

"Stranger," he suggested, "I 'lowed I'd love to ride out the road a piece, an' I figgered I'd ask ye ter lend me yore horse fer about a half-hour. I hain't ergwine fur, an' I won't ride him hard. I'll do es much fer you when you come up my way."

With ready assent, the farmer went over and untied his plug, and Red Newton swung himself to the saddle. Then he rode slowly and casually after the boy. He did not try to overtake him, satisfying himself with keeping him in sight, while he himself remained too far back to be recognizable. But Red Newton had affairs of consequence in town, so, as soon as he was satisfied that Newt had lost sight of the buggy, he turned back. He intended to mention the circumstance to Black Pete, but Black Pete was keeping discreetly out of sight, and so he found no opportunity for speech with him.

Meanwhile, the throng about the court-house was thickening, and Red Newton caught sight of Jake Falerin making his way to a place near the stand. That was his own cue for action, so, forgetting minor things, and keeping as inconspicuous as possible, he began edging toward a position of proximity in Falerin's rear. He signaled with a nod to one of his kinsmen, who was standing silently, but alertly, a little way off, and who at once began working forward in answer to the sign. The plan worked with well-oiled smoothness. Red Newton came so close that he almost brushed shoulders with his intended victim, and even when he stood at Jake Falerin's back, chewing his tobacco with as little expression as a cow chewing its cud, Falerin did not turn around or suspect his presence.

As the speaking went forward, Red Newton cast his eyes about, and placed those of his kinsmen who were present. It had not been deemed advisable to have the clan largely represented, and it gave him pleasure to recognize that Falerins largely out-numbered Spooners. Later, when the question of self-defense and placing the responsibility arose, it would appear that the Falkins element had come en masse, and from this circumstance would arise a presumption of malice aforethought on their part. That would materially strengthen the Spooner defense. In dividing the mountain men into the two factions of Spooner and Falkins, Red followed the classification of the feud. The Falerins and Hulburts and their kindred were "Falkinses," though they bore other names, just as he himself, though a Newton, was nevertheless a Spooner.

At the psychological moment, Red Newton stepped forward and violently dug his elbow into Jake Falerin's midriff. Falerin wheeled to see who was crowding him, and the eyes of the two mountaineers met in a glance which escaped the generality of upturned faces. So well did each understand what a quarrel between them must mean that Jake did not hedge an inch nor attempt to evade the issue. He planted his left fist on Red Newton's jaw, while he drew with his right. But Red Newton was the more prepared, though, as he reeled back under the blow, he would have fallen, had there been room to fall. As it was he leaned against the crowd, and fired from that position, just a fraction of a second before Falerin's weapon came free of the holster. It was only those directly at Red's back who saw the swift play, and to their eyes it bore the seeming of self-defense. In the same instant, the kinsman at Red Newton's shoulder fired on the attorney so suddenly that it looked as if he too were aiming at Falerin's head, instead of just to its side.

Later in the afternoon, Black Pete, whose name had been mentioned to the commonwealth attorney by several of the Falerins, walked voluntarily into the office of that functionary. His demeanor was quiet and deeply grieved. Moreover, it was characterized by a show of frankness that was disarming. He said he would be glad to submit to a search – that he never went armed. He feared that in an indirect way, though entirely without his intent, he had been instrumental in bringing on the afternoon's deplorable tragedy. The commonwealth's attorney was astounded at this unsolicited statement, verging so closely on a confession, and felt impelled to warn the Deacon that he might yet find himself a defendant, and that whatever he said would be used against him. Had the Deacon been addicted to smiling he would have smiled then. As it was, he only nodded his head gravely, half sadly, as he stood there, his hands in his pockets, and his steady gray eyes unwaveringly holding those of his inquisitor.

"I reckon that's right, an' I'm obliged to you," he answered respectfully, "but I find as I go 'long that a man gets just as far by tellin' the full truth."

"Just as you like. What part did you have in this affair?" demanded the state prosecutor – a little too eagerly.

"Maybe you'd better let me tell it my own way," suggested Black Pete imperturbably. "I haven't got much education and I may ramble a little, but I'll do my best. You know all about the feud, I reckon? I went West years ago, and out there I got to see that these things are foolish. A sort of truce was patched up finally, and it was agreed that I must stay West, and Jake Falerin must leave the mountains, too. I got a little money saved up, and sent word that I was comin' home to settle up a mortgage on my sister's farm, and attend to some other family business. I didn't aim to stay, and I haven't been any closer to the mountains than right here. I wasn't goin' any closer till everybody agreed to it. I didn't think these fellers would fight right here in Winchester."

The Deacon stood with the regretful air of one who has been disappointed in his confidence as to the worthiness of others. At last, he continued in a conscience-stricken tone:

"I've been studyin' about it considerable since it happened. I'm afraid the Falerins saw me, and figured I'd broke the truce by comin' back, and, when Jake met Red in the crowd, they both got panicky, and begun to shoot."

That was all the Deacon had to state except his promise to remain in Winchester, subject to the call of the commonwealth. He knew that no one, save a handful whom he could trust, could implicate him in the conspiracy, which he had devised and engineered. His claws and fangs were well-tucked under his sheep's hide of innocence. While he was in the law-office, the jailer arrived with news that Red Newton and his other prisoner had asked to see Black Pete Spooner, with a view to employing counsel for their defense. The Deacon turned to the commonwealth's attorney.

"What do you think?" he said. "I reckon these boys have that privilege, haven't they? I want to be fair all round. If they did shoot in self-defense, I want them to have their rights, but I'll be here if you need me."

So, late in the afternoon, in the privacy of the cell which the two mountaineers complacently shared, the Deacon heard from Red how the boy, Newt, fresh from the penitentiary, was already on the trail of a "marked-down" victim. It was news that disconcerted the master assassin to a degree which he would not have cared to admit. These men depended upon making a case of self-defense, and looked to him to see them through. The gravest element that confronted them was the violent dislike of the bluegrass, where they must face trial, for the murderous tendencies of the mountains. If there should occur on the heels of the first tragedy a second, traceable to a mountain man, the fat would be in the fire. At all costs, young Newt must for the present hold his hand. Above all else, that was imperative. Black Pete questioned the prisoner searchingly and learned that Newt had gone out Main Street, and Red had followed him for some distance. Therefore, that was the road young Newt would watch, and the road upon which young Newt must be watched. Cawsler later reported the manner in which the boy had come demanding arms, and the Deacon bitterly regretted having surrendered to him his own pistol.

And Newt had disappeared. Of each Spooner he met, the Deacon demanded news of his whereabouts. Finally, near the court-house, he met a man who had seen the sought-for one sauntering slowly out the road near the edge of town. Since it was only a few minutes before, he could not have gone far.

The Deacon hurried forward, and from a party of incoming negroes he learned of the dance, which explained the procession of buggies and gave him a clew. Probably, Newt had learned that his intended victim would be there. At least, it would be worth investigating. But of Newt himself he saw nothing, for when he reached the spot where the boy had climbed the fence to kill time behind the hedge, he unwittingly passed him by. At the beginning of the stone fence, where he caught first the music and the light of the festivities, his eye took in the growth of locusts and his mountain mind reckoned by swift processes. Here was such natural cover as a man would be likely to seek in working his way surreptitiously rearward. He had begun to fear he might be too late, in which event his coming at all would be more fatal than staying away. That haste prevented his using the most exhaustive caution, and so he did not explore to the far side of the woodland, but crossed the fence at the nearest corner and went swiftly back, skulking in the shadow. In point of fact, instead of being later than the boy, he arrived first, but on the opposite side of the broad lawn. When he had gone back as far as the house level, his painstaking search commenced. He was not only endeavoring to remain concealed, important as that was, but also to penetrate the shadows and find the other hidden man. It was a thing that would have been sheer impossibility but for his splendid wood-craft and the catlike focus of his eyes in the night. So, when he had exhausted the possibilities on that side of the house to his full satisfaction, he recognized his mistake, and knew that he had wasted precious time. He should be on the far side, and, taking a long detour which carried him far to the rear of the barns and led him behind the fence line of the paddock lots, he worked his way up again to the front until he reached the edge of the lilac bushes, and could see the summer-house. To that spot he began crawling noiselessly, and, led by a sure instinct, and while still some fifty yards away, his trained eye caught a stealthy shadow also hitching forward at his front. There still lay between him and Newt Spooner the matter of some thirty yards, and, even if he rose to his feet and ran for it, he would overtake the boy so close to the vine-covered retreat that any sound of interference would result in the discovery of both. He did not personally know that the summer-house was occupied, but he argued it from the movements of the other skulker. Newt was so engrossed in his hate that at this particular moment he had eyes and ears only for the front. Between the lilac thicket where Black Pete crouched and the vine shadows where Newt knelt, lay an open space of flooding radiance, but it was directly behind the summer-house, and, unless Newt saw him crossing it, no one was apt to see. The Deacon rose to his feet and ran for it.

As Newt thrust the revolver behind him to cock it, Black Pete's hand closed silently around his, and Black Pete's thumb was jammed between the back-drawn hammer and the firing-pin.

CHAPTER VII

Henry Falkins and Lucinda Merton had not kept close count on the flying moments since they had entered the summer-house. The girl had promised to sit out two consecutive dances with him, since to-morrow morning he must go back to the mountains. So, having only a little while and much to say, he had plunged in, and, though his voice was low, his words came tumultuously. Of course, she knew that he was in love with her, but until to-night it had been a thing which had been given no concrete declaration. Except for a glow of confession in her eyes, she had said nothing of loving him. Yet now, when he wished to claim every moment for himself, she had asked him to tell her about his hills and their people, of whom she and her world knew so little.

"I want you to understand the life and conditions there," he told her, "and yet I don't want to talk of that to-night. I would like to paint for you true pictures of my mountains just as they look under this moon, as they will look when to-morrow's sun comes up over the peaks and begins to drive away the lingering mists; of the elder bushes and rhododendron and wild roses that bloom on the tangled slopes; but to-night I want to talk only of you and me."

He paused, and her voice carried a responsive thrill as she said:

"I should love your mountains! It must all be very beautiful – but so different from this." Her eyes traveled out with native pride over the smooth opulence of the country, which had seemed the Promised Land to the eyes of its pioneer discoverers.

"Yes," he admitted; "it is very different. We have rugged fields and rugged people. Down here you spring from Cavalier stock. But to-night there are in the world only ourselves. Let's talk of our private universe." His voice was feverishly eager. "Until I can in some way improve my fortunes, God knows I ought to be silent as to love." He leaned forward and added desperately: "But I can't be silent. After all, what is the use? You know I love you. If I never spoke a syllable of it, you would still know it. You can feel it in the tremor of my hand when I take yours in greeting. And if I lock my lips, my eyes give them the lie. You know I love you, but you will never know how much."

He leaned forward and his breath came fast while his heart pounded with the great anxiety of putting his fortunes to the touch. He had knowledge of other lovers who had come and gone; gone very reluctantly, from the quest of her heart.

He had known her a year, and friendship had grown into that intimacy which tacitly admits something deeper than the casual. In her house he had been accepted almost as a member of the family – but that need not mean that he was accepted as a lover. In his mountains such an association would have been tantamount to an engagement, but here in the bluegrass it was different.

There had been sometimes a quality in her smile which he had never seen on her lips or in her eyes for other men, and she must know of his love. Still, he had heretofore been content to hope without certainty – and now the moment had come when, if he had builded on false dreams, he must wake to a reality of which he could think only with terror.

For his own crude land, he was a rich man, whose status was the status of a baron; but, down here in the counties of aristocracy and wealth, he was poor and a mountaineer.

"I suppose," he went on, with a voice that came from a taut throat, which he forced into measured syllables, "I suppose that until I can offer you a home like this, I should not ask you to confess a love for me, even if you could feel it. I can't even ask you to marry me yet, and still because you must know it, because you have a heart that must tell you, it seems to me that it is only hypocritical to lock my lips. My heart is too full to be damned up. It must have utterance. It must say, 'I love you.' I can't go on any longer being just a favored friend." He paused a moment and wiped the moisture of his anxiety from his brow, and his voice was tensely even in its control. "It means too much now, for that. If I am living in a fool's paradise I must know it before it is too late. They say we men of the Cumberlands have somber natures that take things seriously. To hope too long – and then fail – " He broke off again and added quietly – "that would be a thing that would utterly ruin me. I love you."

The girl did not at once speak. He saw that her face was downcast and that her breast rose and fell, in an emotion which might be pity. Perhaps she, too, found speech difficult because she was merciful. A man and a girl were coming toward the summer-house, and Henry Falkins watched them with a fascination of fear lest they interrupt. The seconds seemed to stretch into an interminable suspense. Slowly he put out his hand, and took hers. Her fingers trembled in his grasp and slowly he bent and kissed her lowered head.

"I am waiting," he whispered; but something in the voice said more and told her of the torture of his doubt.

At last, very slowly, her face came up and her eyes met his. They were misty eyes, but smiling, and as he bent with a wild leaping of his pulses and took her in his arms, her lips, too, met his, responsive to his kisses.

Finally he rose, and now it was his own hands that trembled and his own senses that swam with the intoxication of a happiness which seemed to him miraculous.

"I suppose," laughed the girl, "I ought to be ashamed to surrender so quickly – but I'm not. I'm very proud."

For a moment after that they sat silent and across the moonlight came the band music and the softened laughter of the dancers. And it was at that moment that Newt Spooner, so close that they could almost have heard his breathing, was reaching into his pocket for his borrowed revolver. The pause was brief, for the girl, looking into her lover's eyes, became suddenly beset by a new thought – perhaps some subtle premonition – and in its wake came panic. She laid her hands on his shoulders and bent so close that he could feel the play of her breath on his forehead.

"But you are going back there," she exclaimed; "back to the mountains, and I'm afraid. Are you in any danger, because, if you are, you sha'n't go! I won't let you go. Why, only to-day, there in Winchester, think what happened!"

The man laughed.

"I sha'n't be hurt," he assured her. "Your love will be my talisman."

"If my love has such power," she exclaimed, "you will go on living to the end of time."

He took her two hands in his.

"Let's have no thought of danger to-night," he said. "To-night belongs to love, dearest: to love and to us."

And that was the exact moment at which Black Pete Spooner closed his hand over the pistol, thrusting his thumb between hammer and pin, and his forefinger between trigger and guard.

So suddenly interrupted at the threshold of his attainment, a man from the lowlands would have betrayed himself with oath or exclamation, or at least have struggled noisily in the grip that thwarted him. Newt Spooner was a mountaineer. Ambuscading caution was to him as instinctive as to the fox or weasel. He felt his hand drawn down at his back so forcibly that, crouching with his weight on one knee and one foot, he could not rise – yet he remained utterly noiseless. He carefully turned his head, and at the distance of a few inches recognized, even in the darkness, the drooping mustache and square jaw of the Deacon. The Deacon was holding a finger of the disengaged hand to his lips in an imperative command for silence. Black Pete was always a diplomat. He regarded this moment as one of rather desperate crisis, calling for extreme finesse.

No word of explanation could be spoken; the slightest sound of scuffling would give the alarm fatal to both. He knew that the implacable hatred of this single-idead boy was not a thing to yield readily. So he continued to put into his manner and touch something of subtle and friendly reassurance, lest Newt flare into reckless and needless antagonism. And Newt felt at the moment a wave of relief in recognizing one of his own people.

The strategist gently shook the hand which held the weapon in hint that Newt should surrender it, while he nodded and laid the other hand conciliatingly on the boy's shoulder. But Newt, although he made no sound or motion, held tightly to the pistol, and so for a moment while Henry Falkins was boasting of his safety with the confidence of youth and love, his intended assassin crouched not six feet away while the man who sought to prevent his act bent over him, holding his hand, and the wills of the two wrestled in utter silence.

There is in all leaders, good or bad, a psychological, almost hypnotic element of power which can, at need, act without words. Black Pete was recognized so thoroughly as a man of leadership that the enemy talked peace only on the basis of his exile. Newt Spooner had always regarded him with awe as the leader of his clan. Moreover, the Deacon's attitude just now was rather that of a friend who carried a warning than that of an enemy. The hypnotism of his masterful quiet was telling on the infuriated boy and yet there flared anew in his breast a dangerous resentment against the balking of his purpose. How it might have ended is problematical, but as they held their strained pose, and as Henry Falkins talked on in false security, a second couple came strolling to the summer-house. Finding it occupied, they banteringly apologized for intrusion, while Miss Merton and her escort blushingly declared themselves on the point of departure, and went back to the dance. So the chance was gone. Slowly, Newt surrendered his pistol, and the Deacon silently rose to his feet and pointed off through the bushes. The boy strode sullenly on ahead and neither he nor his captor made a sound or spoke a word until they had progressed so far into the shadow that they were safe from overhearing. Then and then only Newt wheeled. His voice was almost a sob in its bitter and vibrant passion, as, with blazing eyes and snarling teeth, he demanded:

"What in hell did ye do thet fur? Damn ye, he b'longs ter me. Ye didn't hev no call ter interfere." He threw himself prone on the ground, clawing into it with his lean fingers as a frenzied animal might claw, and his thin body racked itself with silent sobs of anger and frustration. It ended in a fit of coughing which he could not control, and which he smothered in his two hands until the paroxysm passed.

The Deacon sought to soothe him. Most mountaineers speak with a nasal harshness, but this man had the exceptional quality that gave to his words an ingratiating and velvety smoothness.

"Don't worry, son. I wouldn't have interfered, only I was obliged to. He's your enemy, and he did you wrong, but this ain't the moment to kill him. Go back home and bide your time. If you need help, call on me after a little."

"Hits as fitten a time es any," blurted Newt tensely. "They hain't no manner of use puttin' hit off. I tells ye I'm ergwine ter git him. Hit hain't ergwine ter do no good to argify with me. Nothin' hain't ergwine ter change me none."

"Son," insisted the other calmly, "I ain't aimin' to change you. I've never let men change me, have I? But there's a time for everything, an' just now you must hearken to me." He sketched briefly and forcibly his interviews in the office of the commonwealth attorney and at the jail. He enlarged on the fatality of having another shooting by a mountaineer tread so close on the heels of the first tragedy.

"You ain't aimin' to put these boys' necks into ropes, son," he suggested chidingly at the end. "You can get your man without makin' your own kin pay such a steep price. All I ask of you is to pass me your word that you won't do anything until you get back to the hills. Seems to me that's fair enough."