The Code of the Mountains

Newt sat silent for a time, scowling blackly, but at last he rose and nodded.

"I gives ye my hand on thet – because I don't see no way ter holp myself," he capitulated. It is the mountain's formula of oath, and though the men who use it rarely shake hands, its utterance is a recognized bond.

"Come along to town with me," suggested the Deacon. "You can sleep at my boardin' place, and in the morning you can start out."

But to that proposition Newt shook his head.

"I aims ter start right now, es soon es I kin buy a snack ter put in my pocket," he announced decisively. "Which road goes towards Jackson?" When at last he did lie down for sleep that night, it was under the lee of a last year's straw stack and surrounded by the rustling spears of this year's corn, where he could look up at the stars and call defiantly upon them all to bear witness that he had no intention of being deterred by the interference of any man.

It had been a very exhausting day, strenuous with much footsore tramping; strenuous, too, with the buffeting of emotions as sudden and violent as the tempests which sometimes swept across his hills; bending the forests, lashing the sandstone ramparts, shrieking through valleys and cannonading along the slopes. And like the hills when such a storm has wreaked its noisy wrath and swollen all the thread-like streams to freshets, he lay by his straw stack supine and shaken. It seemed to him that he had only just stretched himself out on the straw when he opened his eyes to see the east pallidly kindling with the preface of dawn, yet it had been long enough for his limbs to have cramped and chilled under the moisture of the night. He rose and ate a small supply of his provender, and took a swig from the flask, wiping the mouth of the bottle with his palm, after the custom of his country. After that he started on with the gray dawn growing rosy at his front. At length, he halted and drew a long breath of relief and satisfaction, for already he was beginning to recognize, in the changing character of the country, harbingers of home. The smooth swell of the bluegrass began to break into a choppier formation and assume raggedness, while far away the sky-line was broken by a climbing back-bone of foothills.

Unless he could mend his rate of travel he had still ahead several days of journeying, but early in the afternoon, when he sat down to rest, it was by a woodland stream where the underbrush grew in a tangle and the wild roses were blooming among scrub oaks. Cornucopias of the trumpet-flower flared vividly, and here and there he caught a glimpse of a chinked log-cabin. That night he slept at Clay City, where the channel of Red River was almost choked with logs; logs floated down from higher up. Once more he slept in a "feather-bed," for a distant relative had taken him in, willing to "eat an' sleep him" for no greater remuneration than the news of what had happened in Winchester; willing even to produce from some hidden place a jug from which moonshine liquor ran white and colorless.

The next day brought such a dawn as he had not seen since he had left Jackson with cuffed wrists, a dawn in which the sun did not blaze forth at once unobscured, but came up to dissipate the mists and flare redly through their vanishing, before he stood forth master of the day. And even then the skies were full of sullen hinting at rain. Nature seemed to brood in accord with his own dreariness of mind; and wisps of cloud trailed down the summits, as he nodded with a curt, "I'm obleeged ter ye," and pushed onward, boring into hills that grew ever taller and wilder.

At last, he came to Jackson, the shack town that is the county seat of Breathitt, which the world knows as "bloody." But even the twisting and steep streets beyond the bridge offered this traveler no security for tarrying. Jackson knew that in Winchester Jake Falerin had fallen, and that Black Pete was back from the West, and Jackson was a Falerin strong-hold. The outlook was for stormy days, and it would be as well for the boy to push at once to his own section, some twenty miles away, where along the waters of Troublesome and Lost Creeks he would be among his own people. In front of the court-house and along the main street he saw groups of men, some of them Falkinses and some Spooners, and though there was no open hostility, they separated studiously into their own respective groups and their movements were characterized by an alertness which told of mutual and restive suspicion.

Newt Spooner was not afraid, but just now he was not wasting his activities. Moreover, he was still half-sick and not courting quarrels save those of his own choosing. As he strolled through the streets of the town, no one seemed to notice him. He had been forgotten. He paused before the court-house with the small "jail-house" squatting in the yard and surveyed both with wormwood bitterness of unforgiving memory.

Across the street where brick banks and modern plate-glass store fronts stood jammed between frontier-like shacks, he halted once more. Court was adjourning for the noon recess, and a homicide jury came out of the dingy doors, marching in columns of twos, while behind, shirt-sleeved and collarless, stalked the sheriff, herding the panel to its mid-day meal and bearing a long hickory staff. They were rude and bearded men, for the most part spare and sinewy, but the elder among them tramped with a shambling gait that told of unrelieved drudgery.

Newt made his way to the north end of the town, and took the road across the hills. By nightfall he would be in his own territory.

Now he was once more treading familiar trails, and though he was tired and the way became steeper, he walked with a resilient stride. The roads along the valley gulches were only creek-beds, and where they looped over the tops of ridges they were uneven stairways of broken rock. Sometimes for a little space they ran level along high banks where the sand was like that of a beach. But Newt had taken off his shoes and as he splashed along the water courses, where straining "jolt-wagons" had cut smooth ruts almost hub-deep into the shaly beds, the grateful water stimulated him. About him were great forests almost virgin to the ax. Spruce pines and walnuts and poplars towered over him, and the road dipped often through a gloom like that of a dim chapel. Down there little cascades whispered, and out of fern banks rose huge brown and gray and green bowlders of sandstone, like altars of the Druids. The rhododendron, which his people called "laurel," and the laurel, which they called "ivy," cloaked the open slopes. It was a country where a good walker can travel faster afoot than mounted. He drank from wayside springs and from the flask which his kinsman had refilled. His mind turned to its magnet, and he planned anew the death of Henry Falkins, but now that he was at home he planned with confidence of success and in this conviction he found a certain contentment. It was something to be where he belonged and something to walk free of the chaingang. Around him the hills closed in comforting tiers of ramparts. From the high points of the road, he could look off over valleys to other peaks and see here and there the roof of a cabin with its small patch of corn and its rude out-houses. He passed tilting fields where red and blue calico dresses flashed as entire families worked with hoes, and roadside habitations of logs where raggedy children fled inside to gaze timidly around the corners of door-jambs. Razor-backed hogs and flocks of geese wandered near every habitation, and mules flapped their long ears as they looked out from primitive stables, fashioned by closing in with fence shelters under overhanging shelves of rock.

CHAPTER VIII

When the pitchiness of night closed in until it seemed that the mountains moved up and huddled closer together, Newt was on well-remembered roads and did not pause. In an hour or two the moon would be up, and he would reach the cabin which he called home.

With the coming of the moon the hills underwent a wizardry of beauty which was lost on the boy. First, silvery threads of light began to weave along the bristling ridges of the east and opalescent flecks to glimmer overhead. Then a soft blue-gray light filtered down the slopes; throwing the shoulders of the mountains into relief and bathing the lowlands in a luminous mist. The waters of Troublesome caught the glint and the frogs boomed out from bass to treble, while back in the timbered slopes the whippoorwills set up a plaintive chorus.

Ahead of him Newt saw his destination. A cabin of logs stood darkly at the side of the road, marking his journey's end. Though the moon struck across the small hard-tramped yard, the house threw its shadow forward and was itself a block of darkness from which shone no light. That was because there was no light to shine, except what came from the fireplace, and because there was no window through which it might show. But Newt needed no illumination. He knew every wretched detail by heart. There was one room only, except for the lean-to shed, which served as kitchen and dining-room, and that was reached by going outside and walking around the corner of the house. The one room was pictured on his mind almost as clearly as he trudged toward its door-step as it could be when he entered it. Through the slabs of the puncheon floor the wind came in gusty weather. In each of the four corners was a large double bed with feather mattresses, for the family, when he had left home, had numbered six. About the log walls on pegs driven into the chinking would be hanging such articles of clothing as were not in use, except such other articles as were thrust in disorder under the beds. Unless the family had "lain down" they would be huddling about the hearth with their shoes off, for even in June when the night chill came it was customary to kindle an evening fire. Always in the past, his great grandfather, old Luke Spooner, had sat at the right-hand corner of that hearth, mumbling into his long white beard. Newt wondered if he would still be there. He had been almost a centenarian when they took the grandson away to the penitentiary; his sight almost gone, his hearing almost gone, his brain wasted to a remnant of nightmare brooding, but his physical vitality holding out like a spent and stubborn fortress. Once he had been among the most feared of feudists, tireless, unafraid, vindictive and honest. He would hardly be there now, reflected Newt. He must have died by this time. One member of his family only would he greet with any feeling akin to welcome. His father had in his rough way been fond of him, and Newt in an equally wolfish fashion had reciprocated the feeling. It had never been expressed in words or demonstration, for of these things the mountaineer is as chary as a grizzly. Often in the long warfare of quarreling and bickering between his father and mother, which Newt regarded as a natural and universal incident of family life, his "pappy" had taken his side and rescued him from a "whopping."

Newt thought he would be glad to see his father.

He crossed the stile, hewn in rough steps from a poplar stump, and strode over to the broken mill-stone that served as a door-step. He shouted, "I'm a-comin' in," and pushed at the door. It was barred. That was a sign of the troublesome condition of the times. The mountaineer shouts an announcement of his coming from a distance to avoid the seeming of surreptitiousness, but, having reached the threshold, does not knock.

"Who's thet?" called a high-pitched, irritable voice from the interior. It was his mother's voice, and Newt replied:

"Hit's me, Mammy. Let me in."

No outburst or murmur of surprise broke from the cabin at the announcement of the prodigal's return. He heard only the rasping of a bar being drawn from its sockets, and then the door swung in. Newt entered, and with no offer to embrace his mother cast an appraising glance about the place, which the logs on the hearth revealed in a wavering light. The corners of the room were darkly shadowed, but the semicircle about the fireplace was red and yellow from the flames. The rafters were smoke-blackened, and an odor hung between the walls like that in a house used for curing hams.

About the fire sat the family group, but none of them rose to welcome him. At the right hand corner sat old Luke. He was not dead then, after all, though just now he was sleeping with his bearded, mummy-like face fallen forward and his long hickory staff resting between his knees. Newt's younger brother, "Little Luke," grown since he had left home from a boy of thirteen to a gawky and angular young cub of sixteen, and his sister, who had been twelve and was now fifteen, stared at him in shy silence. His mother who was only a little more than forty had all the seeming of sixty. She was bent and slovenly. But of his father he saw nothing, though a man sat in the remaining chair, and when this interloper leaned forward, holding down his beard with his forefinger as he spat at the ashes, Newt recognized Clem Rawlins, a distant kinsman. Clem's presence surprised him little, for it would have been quite natural for Clem or any other man who found himself benighted to stop and "stay all night."

His mother came forward, and invited:

"Take my cheer, Newt. I'll set on the bed."

Newt dropped into the seat, and inquired:

"Where's pappy?"

"Daid," was his mother's laconic reply.

"When did he die?"

Clem Rawlins answered in a deep, drawling voice:

"He failed tol'able fast-like after ye left, Newt. He had the weak treemers, an' died erbout cawn-plantin' time a-follerin' of yore goin' down below."

The boy said nothing. He sat mutely scowling into the fire.

A constrained silence fell on the gathering, which was at last broken by the boy's mother in a tone of dubious embarrassment.

"With yore old gran-pap on my hands, Newt, an' yore pap daid an' Little Luk kind of puny-like, I couldn't hardly git along withouten some man on the place an' so – " She paused again, then added with a note half-apology, half-defiance: "An' so I married Clem. I was plumb driv ter hit."

She knew that the boy had never liked his kinsman, Clem Rawlins, but now Newt sat with his brow drawn and his gaze fixed on the embers, making no response. Clem waited stolidly, puffing at his pipe, though he, too, would be glad when the moment of explanation was ended. At last, the boy dismissed the topic with the curt comment:

"I reckon thet's yore business."

After a while, he rose and went to the corner of the room where once his few belongings had been kept. He evidently failed to find that for which he sought, for he came back to the fire and demanded:

"Whar's my rifle-gun?"

His mother was still sitting on the edge of the bed. She had filled her clay pipe and lighted it with a coal from the fire. Once more her voice carried the note of anxious embarrassment, and she tried to give it also an ingratiating quality, as she replied.

"Well, ye see, Newty, atter yore pappy died we had a heap of trouble. 'Peared like the good Lord hed done plumb forgot us in his provi-dence. The hail kilt all the cawn, an' the hawgs died off like es ef they was blighted, an' so – " She paused, and the boy finished for her in a voice very metallic, though not reproachful.

"So ye went an' sold my rifle-gun. Is thet what ye war a-tryin' ter say?"

"Thet's hit," she acknowledged. Then in exculpation she went on: "Ye see, Newt, I wouldn't 'a' done hit, only I didn't reckon ye'd want hit no more. We didn't hardly 'low ye'd ever come back hyar noways."

Newt Spooner rose from his chair and stood facing them. His fists were tight-clenched at his sides. The spurting blaze of the slowly dying fire sent his shadow wavering out across the semicircle of light.

"You-all didn't 'low I'd need my rifle-gun no more," he repeated slowly, with forced restraint. "Ye didn't hardly reckon I'd ever come back hyar-abouts. Ye 'lowed I wuz buried alive in thet damned penitentiary whar ye let me go without a-holpin' me none. Ye 'lowed I'd jest stay thar an' rot." He paused and his breath came heavily. Then his utterance quickened. "Well, ye 'lowed plumb wrong. I'm hyar an' thar's a thing I'm hyar ter do, an' hit's a thing thet calls fer a gun. Ye done married this-hyar man. Thet's yore business an' his'n. 'Pears like ter me ye mout 'a' done a sight better, but I hain't got no call ter say nothin' erbout thet."

With a vague idea of placating both sides of what might become a family rupture, the woman suggested in a milder tone than usual:

"I mout 'a' done a sight wusser, too, Newt."

The boy sniffed.

"I don't hardly see how," he retorted. "Now I've done been robbed of my gun. What's become of my pappy's gun?"

His mother hesitated, then confessed:

"I done give it ter Clem."

The son nodded his head.

"Thet's what I 'lowed. Now thet gun b'longs ter me. I've done lawfully heired hit from my pap." He turned suddenly to Clem Rawlins, and his voice rang out in sharp and peremptory outburst.

"Go git hit!"

Rawlins rose in quick obedience, and went to his own corner whence he fetched the repeating rifle that had been the elder Spooner's.

Newt stood before the fireplace, testing and loading the magazine, while his mother looked on in anxious scrutiny.

Then the centenarian across the hearth roused up, lifting his ancient and withered face, in which the jaw muscles worked loosely and flabbily.

"Who air thet feller?" he demanded in a quavering, accusing voice, gazing up without recognition at the tall, spare figure which towered over him.

"Thet's little Newt," shouted the mother, bending her lips close to his ear. The old man sat foolishly blinking for a time as his wandering thoughts came back to a focus.

Finally, he brandished his long staff and stormed weakly.

"Ye hadn't oughter suffered yeself ter be penitentiaried. In my day no Spooner wouldn't 'a' done hit. Ye air the fust one thet's ever wore stripes…"

"I wouldn't of gone thar nuther, ef my own kin hed a-stood by me," blazed the boy with an evil glitter in his eye.

"Don't pay him no mind, Newt," hastily admonished his mother; "he hain't noways responsible. He's plumb fitty."

"Why the hell don't he die?" demanded the youth, gazing down contemptuously on the withered and decaying figure.

"I'm kinder tuckered out," he added a moment later. "I reckon I'll lay down."

Such was Newt Spooner's home-coming.

CHAPTER IX

On the morning after the convict's return, in the hour when the mists still hung in wraith-like fogs over the slopes, Newt and the other men of the household gathered around the kitchen table while his mother and sister, maintaining their position of mere women, served them standing. They ate in sordid silence, stooping low over their plates and neglecting their forks.

The food was perhaps less good than that which the penitentiary furnished its inmates. The bodies of dead bees floated in the wild honey and to a palate accustomed to more delicate provender the reeking grease in which everything floated would have induced nausea, but it was the food upon which the former convict had been reared, and he greedily bolted it. As soon as he had finished his breakfast he rose, and, picking up his rifle, sauntered toward the door. This he did with a belligerent air, for he knew the simple laws of native life. The land and cabin had belonged to his father, and the boy felt that he needed no invitation to return and take up his residence there. None the less, if he was to stay, he would be expected to assume his just share in the burdens of daily work. For the present, however, he meant to take a vacation; to tramp the hillsides and see how far he had lost his knack with the rifle. So, he filled his pocket with cartridges, and strolled out of the door, kicking from his way several trespassing chickens that were exploring the interior of the room. As he passed the barn, Clem and "Little Luke" were feeding the mule and the hogs. Newt paused for a moment and watched them, making no offer to assist, and they for their part made no request that he lend a hand.

"Goin' huntin', Newt?" queried the step-father, pausing with a shuck-basket of feed in his hands.

"Mebby so," growled the home-comer.

Clem regarded his uncommunicative law-kin with an expressionless stare for a while, and then said slowly:

"Hit hain't none of my concern, I reckon, but I seen yore pockets was strutty, an' I 'lowed ye mout be goin' tol'able fur."

"Mebby so," repeated Newt.

The pockets to which Clem alluded bulged with ammunition and a flask. The phrase he used was slang in Scotland in the days when Queen Mary reigned. It is common parlance to-day where these beleaguered Anglo-Saxons retain the idioms of their ancestors, and live the life of another century in mountains which were old before the Andes, the Alps, the Rockies or the Himalayas were thrown above the level of the sea. The Elizabethan gallant who was "strutty" threw out a swelling chest, hence, that which bulges is strutty.

The household did not see Newt again until the sun was well into the west, but at intervals they heard the sharp bark of his rifle growing fainter as he penetrated farther into the hills.

For Newt had taken himself away into the thickness of the timber and laurel for target practice. He went about it as systematically as though he were a battleship at maneuvers. As he swung his way noiselessly along forest paths, he would stop suddenly and throw the piece to his shoulder, sighting on some knot or leaf picked out at random. On these occasions he wasted no powder and lead. He was simply testing his quickness of eye and steadiness of hand, and he smiled with grim pleasure at the result. But at last a target showed high up on a walnut trunk. There the figure of a giant woodpecker hung, drumming loudly, and inviting a trial shot, by the very conspicuousness of its red, black and white plumage. Newt leveled the rifle and fired, and the big bird came tumultuously floundering to the ground.

The boy smiled unpleasantly:

"I reckon," he mused, "hit hain't only woodpeckers I kin hit."

As the day wore on, he practised more intricate feats. Gathering a handful of hickory leaves, he fastened them about the gigantic girth of a tulip poplar which towered nobly in a level place. Then, going back a distance of fifty yards, he began running rapidly around the tree. At every few yards of his course he would halt abruptly, wheel and fire at one of the leaves. As he went up, panting, to inspect results, he smiled again in grim satisfaction.

Along the creek-bed roads and over the mountain-scaling trails that day, a girl was taking a twenty mile walk from the clean dormitory of the college to the vermin-infested murk of a cabin on Troublesome. She carried a small bundle, but the long march was a thing that did not seem to trouble her.

Sometimes she came to places where the road ran down into the waters of shallow fords, and then she stopped and took off her shoes and stockings and waded to the other bank.

On either side of her rose the rustling forests, tuneful with the song of birds. The laurel blossoms waved pink centers and the rhododendron nodded at her.

Here and there a squirrel barked or a cock-quail sounded his "bob-white" to his nesting mate. And as Minerva tramped on with that resilient, tireless stride which was one of the few blessings of her hard heritage, the cloud on her brow was dispelled and after a while her voice rose to the crooning of an ancient "ballet," and she remembered only that she was young and strong and that it was June. Perhaps she dreamed a little of a make-believe world in which the men were not brutal and bestial, but, like the Henry Falkins of her imagination, individuals who had heard of chivalry and who even in this age preserved something of its spirit and its spark.

Yet every now and then the picture of the cabin rose before her imagination, and the smile died from her eyes, and her lips became straight-set and taut. She saw the old imbecile in the chimney corner and the shrewish step-mother, and the badgering step-sister, and even in the father who had brought her here, she knew that she had no effective ally. Clem Rawlins had his work cut out for him in protecting himself in these matters, and he sought the path of least resistance by taking refuge in surly silence until he was goaded to the point where his temper broke into violent outburst.