The Code of the Mountains

The usually deserted roads were no longer empty. From every trail men were riding townward. The rumor had gone broadcast that to-day would be eventful, and from both sides of the line the clans were gathering. Many of them arrived early, and instinctively Spooners grouped themselves on one side of the street and Falkinses on the other. Rifles were much in evidence, but with this exception there was as yet no sign of trouble.

As Newt had ridden out of the stable-lot, Minerva had come to the door of the cabin. On the Fourth of July there were no classes at the college, and the girl was back. She saw her father gaze after the departing horseman and then turn with a sagging jaw and an expression of genuine alarm in his eyes. She heard him shout a summons to his younger step-son, and a premonition of danger arose in her heart.

She ran over to the stable, and caught Clem Rawlins by the arm.

"What is it, pappy?" she demanded.

He turned a frightened face toward her, and licked his bearded lips. For a moment he was silent, then he blurted out with no preface or preparation:

"Newty's done sot out fer Jackson ter git Henry Falkins."

With a gasp which she struggled vainly to suppress, the girl reeled back and stood leaning for support against the rough timbers of the stable. For a moment she could not understand, and when she found words she asked in a dazed voice:

"To get Henry Falkins – why?"

Over the hills the mists were slowly lifting. The upper peaks still trailed over their heights, veil-like streamers of gray mists which blotted out all outlines; but below them pale and iridescent patches of color glowed with indescribable delicacy and beauty. The miracle of awakening morning in the mountains was fulfilling itself. There before her the girl saw the crude barn and heard the grunting of razor-backs and the voices of the geese as they waddled down toward the water. She saw her father brushing his arm across his face, and shouting at intervals for his younger step-son. Once more she repeated:

"To get Henry Falkins – why?"

"Henry's ther man thet penitensheried Newt," came the response. "Newt's done swore the blood-oath. He's done tried oncet afore, but he was hindered. Thar's a meetin' over at Jackson terday, an' men air lookin' fer trouble. Newt aims ter git Henry terday."

Suddenly the girl's stupor broke into a fury of inquisition.

"Does ye aim ter stand there an' suffer a man ter be murdered without liftin' a finger ter save him?" Her questioning voice rose shrilly and lapsed into dialect. "Why did ye stand by an' let Newt go?"

Clem Rawlins shook his head.

"What war I a-goin' ter do?" he perplexedly demanded. "Does ye reckon Newty war liable ter take counsel offen me."

"Well, ye've got ter do suthin now, Clem Rawlins," she commanded, and her voice was fiercely imperative. "Ther blood-curse hes laid on these hyar hills full long, an' God Almighty will hold ye blameful ef ye don't stop this killin'."

The man stood there dazed and frightened, and dropped his eyes before the flaming accusation of her steady gaze.

His bare toes twisted themselves in the dust, and at last he spoke, almost in a whine:

"Ther Deacon hes done bid me ter fotch word ter Jim Spooner's cabin ef Newt fared forth terday. They aims ter send ther signal ahead with fox horns, an' ther Deacon 'lows ter look atter Newty when he gits ter town. Thet's what I'm a-callin' sonny fer. I wants ter send him over ter Jim's house."

The girl laughed scornfully. This moment of need had transformed her from Minerva of the schools to Minerva of the unrelenting hills. Her mission was still the mission of the school, but her method was the method of the hills.

"An' ye aims ter trust ther life of ther only real man in these mountings ter ther dawdling of sonny?" The question was contemptuous. She, who brooked day-long heckling without retort, must now be answered without evasion. "No – I'll go myself, an' I won't stop thar. I'll borry a ridin'-critter from Jim Spooner, an' I'll take the short cut over ther ridges an' ther roughs, an' I'll git ter town ahead of Newt. I aims ter carry a warnin' inter Jackson."

She wheeled and without sun-bonnet or hat plunged into the laurel thickets of the hillside, and was climbing with a tireless stride up slopes which would have winded a razor-back hog.

Later on, she could think: now, she must act. The life of the man she had idealized was the prize for which she was fighting.

Suddenly the full significance of the boy's declaration that he would accomplish his end if he had to "ride through hell on hossback" came to her.

She had started out by hating Newt. Of late, she had felt that deep sympathy for him which is the borderland of affection. She had resolved on reclaiming him. Now, again, she hated him.

Fifteen minutes after she had started, she was riding away from the stile of Jim Spooner's house on a borrowed mule. The short cut she contemplated taking required a mule. There were fords where a horse, with its less steady footing, would have probably hurled her to death. There were washed out trails where the ride would be in the nature of tightrope walking. But these things did not deter Minerva Rawlins. She was a mountain woman with a mission to perform.

As she rode away from the stile, she heard a deep mellow note, which was not loud, but which she knew would carry for miles – the note of a fox horn. It was once the signal of the moss-troopers. It had rung over the heather and gorse in Scotland hundreds of years ago. To-day it would ring as truly over the Cumberland ridges where these belated Scotch high-landers lived the old life in the old, unalleviated way.

She leaned forward in her saddle, lashing her mule with a hickory branch, and listened, and at last her lips curved in a momentary smile of satisfaction. Far ahead of her, more faintly and more distantly, she heard it again. The message was being relayed.

But in that long, hard ride, with the forests tuneful in their color and their unspeakable beauty, yet eloquent in their silences, she had ample opportunity for reflection, and as she reflected, the bitterness oozed out of her heart, and in its place came compassion.

Now, she realized that she was not fighting only to save the life of the man whom she had idealized, who to her was the one knightly person she had ever known; but, also, to save from himself the boy with the black obsession.

At first, Newt had seemed only a murder-driven miscreant whose aims she must thwart. Now, she saw him from a different angle. He was the victim of the false order, which those men and women at the school sought to amend. She, also, was seeking to amend it, but while she must give battle to Newt Spooner and defeat his purpose, she could do so with the realization that his guilt was only the guilt of a sort of lunacy, for which he was scarcely responsible.

His was one idea. He was a prison-reformed man, which is often to say an embittered man.

Of course, she knew that, when he learned what she had done, Newt would believe that the one friend he had ever known had become his irretrievable enemy. Of course, in honesty, if he did not learn it from another source, she must herself tell him what part she had played in this day's happenings. That she would do, and in the end perhaps he would thank her.

At last, on a spent and limping mule, she rode into Jackson. Finally, she stood face to face with the venerable old man, to whom she gave her message. Henry Falkins had not yet reached the town, but she conveyed her warning to his father, and, when she did so, she learned that the pre-arranged code of fox-horn signals had already brought the tidings, so she slipped away and hid herself indoors at the house of a kinsman.

It happened that just as Newt rode his horse around the bend of the north road and turned into Main Street, his eyes narrowed and his jaws clamped, and the lines that ran from his nose down around the corners of his mouth grew deeper and harder. He had heard the whistle of a train, and he knew that it was a signal announcing the approach of his victim.

In point of fact, it heralded not only Henry Falkins, but Red Newton, and Buddy Spooner, his accomplice, freshly released on bond from the Winchester jail, and returning, perhaps, to fire the waiting volcano.

Henry Falkins had seen the two defendants sitting quietly and peaceably in the smoking-car, and they had nodded affably to him. The young man stood now in the car vestibule, as the train roared over the trestle and slowed down at the station. On the platform were two groups of men. They stood with a space between them and eagerly watched the incoming cars. As Henry Falkins swung himself down from the step, he noted, despite the general and studied calmness of deportment, several details which were to his eye significant. He saw in both groups the faces of men from far away in the recessed fastnesses of the hills, who came to town rarely, save in answer to the call of the clan. These men were even more uncouth of apparel and wilder of visage than their brethren. Their dialect, too, was quaint, and some of them carried muzzle-loading squirrel-guns of a pattern long obsolete, save in the antiquated life of "over yon."

McAllister Falkins met his son on the platform, and together they crossed the toll-bridge into the meandering streets of the town proper, where the shacks and houses sprawled like pieces thrown haphazard from a dice-box on a dozen levels and slants. At length, Old Mack voiced his apprehension:

"It looks ugly, my boy," he said. "Jake Falerin's son, young Jake, has assumed the leadership, and his one song is punishment of his father's murder. He's drinking and excited, and he has a strong and nasty-tempered force behind him. I've been with him, urging peace, and several of his older advisers seem inclined to listen. I've gotten their promise that they will make every mortal effort to delay any outbreak until I've made my speech at noon. That's as far as I can move them."

"And the other fellows – the Spooners?" inquired the son anxiously. "What's their mood? If they commence celebrating the return of these assassins, the situation will become hopeless."

McAllister nodded.

"So far they seem quiet enough, but they are all armed to the teeth and keyed to concert pitch. Black Pete has kept religiously out of sight, and seems to be acting in good faith. He slipped secretly into town before sunrise, and has been under cover ever since in the court-house. He has talked to several of his leaders in my presence. They, too, have promised to hold their hands until I have spoken. My God, Henry, the single chance seems to hang on the possibility of my being able to sweep them off their feet – and if I fail – !" He broke off suddenly, and his eyes wore the torture of weariness.

They walked between swelling crowds, always separated by the width of the street into opposing forces, but from both groups the glances that fell upon father and son were glances of confidence and admiration. If there was any man living whose voice could penetrate, with a message of harmony, their armored hatreds, that man was McAllister Falkins. But he had won and held his influence by his total aloofness of attitude. Now, he was to take a central and pivotal position, and, if he failed, his prestige would go down to wreck with his effort, and the work of a lifetime would collapse like a pin-pricked balloon.

No women or children were to be seen on the streets. Doors were closed, and the more public hitching-racks were empty. Horses and mules had been relegated to back streets and sheltered places. But as yet from the gathering storm-cloud had broken no rumble of thunder and no flash of lightning. There was only a constant tightening of nerves to the point where they must be released or snap.

To the eyes of Henry Falkins, the answer was hideously clear. They meant to hear his father patiently as a matter of respect; but they had no intention of being influenced by what he said. When he reached his conclusion, the gathered tempest would break; and, when it had subsided, another bloody chapter would have been added to the history of these mud-rutted and twisting streets. It could not be undone.

Meanwhile, even the complimentary restraint could not last, if a single fanatic broke from the order of the ranks.

The hours crawled with heavy suspense toward noon. Crowds that had been attenuated strings along the sidewalks began drawing in and concentrating at the court-house square. On the right, the Spooners gathered around the figures of the two returned defendants, while on the left the Falkinses drew about a raw-boned young giant whose baleful eyes never left the faces of Red Newton and Buddy Spooner. This was "Young Jake," itching to be about his work of reprisal and impatient of delay. Stragglers drifted in until only the brick path and a few feet of hard-tramped earth at its margin separated the two armies. Newt Spooner was going up and down the street sorely perplexed, because he had been unable to locate the Deacon and make the pretended peace-pact, which was a prerequisite to his own arrangements. Wherever he went, a half-dozen men went also. They were not always the same men, but they were always the same in number, and he knew that he was being watched by an escort of the Deacon's selection, and that until he satisfied that leader, he could not shake them off.

Then he saw McAllister and Henry Falkins, coming toward the court-house. The sun was directly overhead now, and the shadows were short. Newt tightened his grip on his rifle, and, as he did so, the unconfessed body-guard closed around him and worried him with casual conversation. The boy ground his teeth and waited.

Then, as McAllister and Henry Falkins turned into the court-house yard, something happened.

Young Jake Falerin had made his way through his own crowd to the foot of the court-house steps, as befitted the claimant to feud leadership. From that place of vantage he could hear what was said and give his orders when the speech ended. Red Newton and Buddy Spooner had acted on a similar impulse from their side of the path, and as the recently orphaned youth raised his eyes, to find them gazing into those of his principal enemies, his promise to wait became a forgotten thing.

With an oath, his hand swept under his coat, and came out armed. Red Newton had been equally swift, and for an instant the two men stood facing each other with leveled pistols.

At that cue, the clicking of scores of rifle-hammers ran along the waiting lines. Yet, for a second or two, there followed no other sound. The knowledge that to draw a trigger indubitably meant to fall oneself in the same breath, was holding them in check for an undecided breathing space. If a gun cracked now, it meant wholesale carnage along those ranks. Both lines knew it – and hesitated.

Then, while they stood tensed of muscle and blazing of eye, old McAllister Falkins stepped between the ringleaders, and held up his arms. At his side stood his son Henry, and on the quiet of indrawn and tight-held breaths the elder's words broke with almost as staccato a sharpness as that which would have come from the lips of the guns.

CHAPTER XIII

For years no man had heard McAllister Falkins speak except in the smooth and cultivated parlance of the lowlands. In Congress he had been accounted silver-tongued, yet now, by some stress of excitement, when the white-haired patriarch lifted up his voice, words came tumbling from his lips, not in measured phrases but in the crude cascading force of vernacular.

Henry Falkins had felt instinctively that the greater danger for his father lay toward the guns of the Spooners, since it was hardly likely, even in so impassioned a crisis, that a Falkins rifle would turn on a Falkins breast. Acting in response to that belief, he had stepped between the old man and Red Newton, and the two men stood back to back, while the tableau held, each of them unarmed.

And as old McAllister raised his clenched hands and roared out in a voice that carried, "Stop hit, ye damn' fools!" he found his snapping eyes gazing into a pair that looked down into his own, though he stood an even six feet in his socks. The eyes of the protagonist were not snapping like his own, but smoldering dangerously with hatred and resolve. The entire face was black and rigid, from its unkempt locks of jet to its high outstanding cheekbones and clamped under jaw. The right hand that had raised the pistol still held it, but instead of pressing it to the breast of his enemy, young Jake now found it trained on the venerated man whom he must not injure, and with slow unwillingness the muzzle drooped.

"What deviltry air this?" thundered McAllister Falkins, addressing himself to the young ringleader. "What hes happened to the breed of Falkinses thet a man what gave his hand in contract breaks his bond? Air the Falkinses turned liars and pledge-busters?"

"Why hain't ye a-talkin' ter them other fellers, too?" demanded young Jake with that nasal shrillness which excitement brings to the mountain tongue. "Does ye see any more guns over hyar then amongst them murderers?"

At the epithet, a murmur ran ominously along the opposite side of the path, but there were men there to quiet it at the raising of Henry Falkins' hand; men representing the Deacon, whose influence, though unseen, was powerful enough to hold his people leashed.

"Never mind why I don't talk to them." The resonant voice of Old Mack rang like a bell, and, now that the first death-freighted instant had passed, he spoke again without dialect. "I'm talking to you now. You-all gave me your pledge that you would hear me out without a breach of peace. You tried to break that pledge. You drew first. I saw you. I am talking to you now, and I speak as the oldest man in the county who bears the name of Falkins. I speak as the man who has the right, if he chooses, to be the head of the Falkins family, and I am talking to you who are a young cub of a boy and whose name is not even Falkins – and by God, sir, I mean to be listened to!"

Sentence mounted on sentence with growing stress of passionate force, and then came a new silence as the old man stood there, weaponless and rigid, glaring into the face of the younger, who, with pistol half-raised, burned slowly from the nape of his sinewy neck to the top of his forehead in an angry wave of color. But suddenly at his back young Jake felt, rather than heard, a low murmur, and he knew, as it grew and traveled among his clansmen, that at a word from this gray-beard, his people would repudiate the young pretender and follow the aged and rightful leader into war, or – which was a more stressful test – into peace.

While this question of family supremacy was argued on the Falkins' side of the path, the Spooners stood silent, intruding no evidence of interest. They simply waited.

"You have assumed to be the leader of the Falkinses," went on the old man. "By what authority? Tell me that!"

"My pap war the head of our kith an' kin," retorted Jake hotly; "an' I'm his son. He's done been murdered, an' I hain't the sort of a Falkins that sets still an' lets them things go on."

And so capricious is the spirit of a mob that at that statement, as though they had been momentarily misled, a new murmur of concurrence in the sentiment rose from the Falkins side and one or two voices – well in the protected rear – shouted, "No, and we hain't nuther!"

"Silence!" roared old McAllister again. "Let's talk about one thing at a time. You gave me your hand to wait until I had had my say, and you tried to break your bond. When I have had my say, you men can talk about what you are going to do. If you make a move before I've uttered my final word – either you men over there – " with a wave of the hand to the right, "or you over there – " with a wave to the left – "you stamp both crowds with the brand of perjury. And, when I talk, the first thing I shall demand is that the Falkinses either change their names or get a grown man with brains in his head to lead them."

The speaker paused, and the crowd waited, tense and breathless, but now the rifles again hung at their bearers' sides, or rested with grounded stocks. Then young Jake inquired in a sneering drawl:

"Wall, why don't ye begin yore speech?"

"I'm going to, but first I'm going to ask your uncle, Job Falerin, and Jim Falerin and Mark McDonald to come out here."

Slowly three men worked their way to the front of the crowd.

"Men," instructed McAllister Falkins, with the decisiveness of a general officer who has no doubt of instant obedience for his commands, "take that boy's gun away from him until I'm through." For a moment they hesitated, and the boy himself tightened his grip on his weapon until his knuckles showed in white spots.

McAllister Falkins caught the wrist and held it; without a word the three elder kinsmen surrounded and disarmed the young insurgent. Instantly, McAllister Falkins wheeled to face the Spooners.

"Jim Spooner, Joe Belmear, Jerry Sparvin!" He ripped out the names rapidly and crisply. "Do you do likewise with Red Newton and Buddy Spooner."

But the two defendants had been reading the signs, and, as their kinsmen came forward, they voluntarily surrendered their weapons.

"Now," went on the old man, "I'm going to ask you boys on both sides of the road to show me one more evidence of good faith. Let all the men in the front of this crowd carry back their guns and stack them at the rear. Then let them come forward again. Don't let us have any rifles or pistols at the front."

Rather wondering at their ready compliance, yet under the force of something like a spell and also with a sense of immense relief, the crowd began shifting and jostling, and when it again fell quiet not a barrel or stock was visible.

Slowly old McAllister ascended the court-house steps and stood looking down.

"Now," he announced quietly, "I want those same three Falkins men and those same three Spooners, still armed, to come up here and stand on either side of me. I wish to have the honor of their services as my escort and body guard."

As he spoke the last words the old orator smiled, and through the crowd, humorless and grim as it was, ran a murmur of responsive laughter at the ludicrous jest of this old lion asking personal protection. Yet he had drawn impartially from both elements, and the men named stepped to their places with alacrity.

Then the old man began to speak.

The mountaineer has few pleasures, and except for feudal warfare, few excitements. He loves the fulminations of public speaking and the stirring influences of the forensic. McAllister Falkins they believed to be the greatest of all orators, and no interrupting sound broke the thread of his speech. He praised the good in both factions and denounced their mutual lawlessness. He pleaded with the Falkinses, as with members of his own family, to await patiently the process of law in the trials of Red Newton and Buddy Spooner. If they were guilty, they should be hanged. If they had acted in self-defense, they had the right to Spooner forgiveness as well as vindication at the hands of the jury. He hazarded no opinion as to the facts. He only begged all men to wait and see, and while they waited that their leaders should shake hands and maintain as a sacred thing the truce so plighted. But it was the fashion of his saying these things which in the end availed, for he knew his hearers and played on their emotions as a pianist plays on the keys of a familiar instrument.

"Why," he cried at last, "in the good days when we all came, Spooners and Falkinses alike, out of the mother state, facing our common enemies in the wilderness, we came as comrades and as friends. When we quarreled, we settled it in the honest way of men with fist and skull. Then we shot from cover only upon wild beast and Indian, never upon our neighbor. We lived the lives of men, and died God-fearing deaths."

He paused. He had been heard with a rapt attention, but he knew that the difficult part of his speech lay yet ahead, and, as he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, the voice of young Jake Falerin flung challengingly up at him the first interruption.

"We can't be friends with Black Pete Spooner a-stirrin' up strife in these mountings." And after that came cries of "Where is Black Pete?" and "Tell us about the Deacon!"

"Black Pete Spooner is in the mountains, and he is here in town," replied the orator quietly, though he found it difficult to make so portentous an announcement calmly. "But he declares he is here in the interests of peace, and is willing to let you, not only Spooners, but Spooners and Falkinses alike, judge whether or not he can stay. If you decide against him he is ready to go. He asks only that you hear him out, and I ask only that every man of you give me his hand on it, that until he has spoken no one will attack him. I have never had dealings with the Deacon. I have never trusted him, but now I ask you as a personal favor to hear him; holding your hands and paroling him in the interval to my care and in my custody."