The Roof Tree

He paused but received no invitation to present his plea in extenuation, so he proceeded without it:

"I kissed ye erginst yore will, an' I cussed an' damned yore husband, but I did both them things in sudden heat an' passion. Ye ought ter take thought afore ye disgusts me too everlastin'ly much thet I've done loved ye ever since we was both kids tergither. I've done been compelled ter put behind me all ther hopes I ever hed endurin' my whole lifetime an' hit's been makin' a hell of tormint outen my days an' nights hyar of late."

He had risen now, and into his argument as he bowed a bared and allegedly stricken head he was managing to put an excellent semblance of sincerity.

But it was before a court of feminine intuition that Bas Rowlett stood arraigned, and his specious contriteness fell flat as it came from his lips. Dorothy was looking at him now in the glare of revelation – and seeing a loathsome portrait.

"An hour ago," she declared with no relenting in the deep blaze of her eyes, "I believed all good of ye. Now I sees ye fer what ye air an' I suspicions iniquities thet I hedn't nuver dreamp' of afore. I wouldn't put hit past ye ter hev deevised Cal's lay-wayin' yoreself. I wouldn't be none astonished ef ye hired ther man thet shot him … an' yit I'd nigh cut my tongue afore I'd drap a hint of thet ter him."

That last statement both amazed and gratified the intriguer. He had now two avowed enemies in this house and each stood pledged to a solitary reckoning. His warfare against one of them was prompted by murder-lust and against the other by love-lust, but the cardinal essence of good strategy is to dispose of hostile forces in detail and to prevent their uniting for defence or offence. It seemed to Bas that, in this, the woman was preparing to play into his hands, but he inquired, without visible eagerness:

"Fer why does ye say thet?"

Out of Dorothy's wide eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of his treachery against her man.

"I says hit," she answered, still in that level, ominously pitched voice that spoke from a heart too profoundly outraged for gusty vehemence, "because, now thet I knows ye, I don't need nobody ter fight ye fer me. He trusts ye an' thinks ye're his friend, an' so long es ye don't lift no finger ter harm him I'm willin' ter let him go on trustin' ye." She paused, and to her ears with a soothing whisper came the rustle of the crisp leaves overhead. Then she resumed, "Ef he ever got any hint of what's come ter pass terday, I mout es well try ter hold back a flood-tide with a splash-dam es ter hinder him from follerin' atter ye an' trompin' ye in ther dirt like he'd tromple a rattlesnake… But he stands pledged ter peace an' I don't aim ter bring on no feud war ergin by hevin' him break hit."

"Ef him an' me fell out," admitted Bas with wily encouragement of her confessed belief, "right like others would mix inter hit."

"But ef I kills ye hit won't start no war," she retorted. "A woman's got a right ter defend herself, even hyar."

"Dorothy, I've done told ye I jest lost my head in a swivet of wrath. Ye're jedgin' me by one minute of frenzy and lookin' over a lifetime of trustiness."

"Ef I kills ye hit won't start no war," she reiterated, implacably, ignoring his interruption, "an' betwixt ther two of us, I'm ther best man – because I'm honest, an' ye're as craven as Judas was when he earned his silver money. Ye needn't hev no fear of my tellin' Cal, but ye've got a right good cause ter fear me!"

"All right, then," once more the hypocritical mask of dissimulation fell away and the swarthy face showed black with the savagery of frustration. "Ef ye won't hev hit no other way, go on disgustin' me – but I warns ye thet ye kain't hold out erginst me. Ther time'll come when ye won't kick an' fly inter tantrums erginst my kisses … ye'll plum welcome 'em."

"Hit won't be in this world," she declared, fiercely, as her eyes narrowed and the hand that held the knife crept out from under the apron.

The man laughed again.

"Hit'll be right hyar on y'arth," he declared with undiminished self-assurance; "you an' me air meant ter mate tergither like a pair of eagles, an' some day ye're goin' ter come inter my arms of yore own free will. I reckon I kin bide my time twell ye does."

"Eagles don't mate with snakes," she shot out at him, with a bosom heaving to the tempest of her disgust. Then she added: "I don't even caution ye ter stay away from this house. I hain't afeared of ye, an' I don't want Cal ter suspicion nothin' – but don't come hyar too often … ye fouls ther air I breathes whenever ye enters hit."

She paused and brushed her free arm across her lips in shuddering remembrance of his kiss, then she continued with the tone of finality:

"Now I've told ye what I wanted ter tell ye … ef need arises ergin, I'm goin' ter kill ye … this matter lays betwixt me an' you … an' nobody else hain't agoin' ter be brung inter hit… Does ye onderstand thet full clear?"

"Thet's agreed," he gave answer, but his voice trembled with passion, "an' I've done told you what I wants ye ter know. I loves ye an' I'm goin' ter hev ye. I don't keer no master amount how hit comes ter pass, but sooner or later I gits me what I goes atter – an' from now on I'm goin' atter you."

He turned and walked insolently away and the girl, with the strain of necessity removed, sank back weakly against the cool solidity of the walnut trunk. Except for its support she would have fallen, and after awhile, hearing Elviry's voice singing off at the back of the house and realizing that she was not watched, she turned weakly and spread her outstretched hands upward in embrace against the rough wood, as a frightened child might throw its arms about a protecting mother.

When Sam Opdyke had been taken from the courtroom to the "jail-house" that his wrath might cool into submissiveness, and when later he had been held to the grand jury, he knew in his heart that ahead of him lay the prospect of leaving the mountains. The hated lowlands meant to him the penitentiary at Frankfort, and with Jim Rowlett and Parish Thornton united against him, this was his sure prospect.

The two men who had shared with him the sensational notability of that entrance and the deflated drama of that exit had gone home rankling under a chagrin not wholly concerned with the interests of the defendant.

Enmities were planted that day that carried the infection of bitterness toward Harpers and Doanes alike, and the resentful minority began taking thought of new organization; a thought secretly fanned and inflamed by emissaries of the resourceful Bas Rowlett.

Back in the days following on the War of Secession the word Ku Klux had carried a meaning of both terror and authority. It had functioned in the mountains as well as elsewhere through the South, but it had been, in its beginnings, a secret body of regulators filling a void left by the law's failure, and one boasting some colour of legitimacy.

Since then occasional organizations of imitative origin had risen for a time and fallen rapidly into decay, but these were all gangs of predatory activity and outrage.

Now once more in the talk of wayside store and highroad meeting one began to hear that name "Ku Klux" though it came vaguely from the tongue as a thing of which no man had seen any tangible evidence. If it had anywhere an actual nucleus, that centre remained as impalpable and unmaterial as fox-fire.

But the rumour of night meetings and oath-bound secrecy persisted, and some of these shreds of gossip came to Dorothy Thornton over the dooryard fence as passersby drew rein in the shadow of the black walnut. Nearer anxieties just now made her mind unreceptive to loose and improbable stories of that nature, and she gave them scant attention.

She found herself coming out to stand under the tree often, because it seemed to her that here she could feel the presence of the man who had gone away on a parlous mission – and it was during that time of his absence that she found more to fear in a seemingly trivial matter than in the disquieting talk of a mysterious body of avengers stirring into life.

When she looked up into the branches that were colouring toward autumnal hues she discovered here and there a small, fungus-like growth and leaves that were dying unnaturally, as though through the agency of some blight that diseased the vigour of the tree.

Her heart was ready to be frightened by small things, and through her thoughts ran that old prophecy:

"I have ye strong faithe that whilst that tree stands and grows stronge and weathers ye thunder and wind and is revered, ye stem and branches of our family alsoe will waxe stronge and robust, but that when it fails, likewise will disaster fall upon our house."

CHAPTER XXIV

From the shallow porch of a house over which brooded the dismal spirit of neglect and shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that should have been young, but were old with the age of a heart and spirit gone slack.

Evidences of thrift cast overboard bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair, the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served in their unsightliness to make one forget that the features themselves were well modelled, and that the thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken curves to bring back comeliness of proportion.

The woman was twenty-two and looked forty-five, but the small, shawl-wrapped bundle of humanity that she held in her arms was her first child, and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood beauty.

Under her feet the flooring of the porch creaked its complaint of disrepair and the baby in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of malnutrition.

As the mother clasped it closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:

"Kain't ye, no fashion, gentle him ter sleep, Sally?"

The mother shook her head despondently.

"My milk don't seem ter nourish him none," she answered, and the voice which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine of tragedy.

Into the lawless tangle of the "laurel-hell" that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man who had crept yard by yard to the thicket's edge drew back at the sight of the older woman.

This man carried a rifle which he hitched along with him as he made his slow progress, and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks were slightly hollowed because for two days he had avoided human habitations where adequate food could be obtained.

Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil until the mother should come out or the other woman go away.

At least, Parish Thornton told himself, his sister and her baby were alive.

Out of the house door slouched a year-old hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs. It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate tail at the woman's feet, then came suddenly to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting at will in what should have been a potato patch.

The hog wheeled with a startled grunt and stampeded into the thicket – almost upsetting in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.

But the dog had stopped and stood rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled in his throat.

That engrossment of interest and disquiet held until the woman with the baby in her arms came down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the yard.

Then Thornton let his whisper go out to her with an utterness of caution: "Don't say nothin', Sally… Walk back inter ther woods … outen sight of the house … it's me … it's yore brother, Ken."

For an instant she stood as tremulous as though she had seen or heard a ghost, while in her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded. Then she said: "I'll be thar d'reckly. I'll take ther baby back ter Mirandy."

"No," commanded the man, "bring hit with ye. I hain't nuver saw hit yit."

* * *

Parish Thornton had come safely home, and in forest stretches where fallen leaves lay crisp and thick under foot the razor-backs were fattening on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept an ashen mist of violet. "Sugar trees" blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in the sweet-gums awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet of burgundy.

Before the house in the bend of the river the great walnut stood like a high-priest lording it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush the drifting cloud-fleece by day and the stars by night. It whispered with the wandering voices of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.

Mellow now and tranquil in its day of fruitage it had the seeming of meditation upon the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness of death and the miracle of resurrection.

Yet the young wife searched its depths of foliage with an eye of anxiety for, though she had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth and height with a contagion of unhealth.

Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were gathering and piling the walnuts that should in due season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored away for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and in their veins, too, was the wine and the fragrance of that brief carnival that comes before the desolation of winter.

Dorothy straightened and, looking off down the road, made sudden announcement.

"Look thar, Cal. Ef hit hain't a stranger ridin' up on hoss-back. I wonder now who is he?"

With unhurried deliberation, because there was languor in the air that day, the man rose from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted figure his features stiffened and into them came the expression of one who had been suddenly stricken.

Dorothy, still looking outward, with the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who calmly accepts the inevitable.

By that time the horseman had halted and nodded. He dismounted and threw his rein over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton: "Ken, I reckon ye knows me," he said, "an' I reckon ye knows what brought me."

Parish went forward, but before he reached the stile he turned and in a level voice said, "Dorothy, this hyar man's Jake Beaver. He's ther high-sheriff – from over in Virginny … I reckon he seeks ter take me back."

Dorothy stood with all her pliant sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation, and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently a commonplace, the sheriff shifted his weight from foot to foot, and fanned himself with his hat.

The exact wording of the warrant was after all of no particular consequence. The announcement of its purport had carried all its necessary significance. Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton, also known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard – these names being included in the document as aliases – read it from preamble to signature and seal at the end.

Then he inquired: "How come ye ter diskiver wh'ar I was at, Jake?"

The officer shook his head. "Thet's a question I hain't got ther power ter answer ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin's somehow and drapped a hint ter ther Commonwealth's Attorney."

With a nod of comprehension the man who was wanted accepted that explanation. He had not expected a fuller one.

Then, turning, he complied with the demands of courtesy. "Dorothy," he asked, "hain't ye goin' ter invite Jake ter come in an' eat him some dinner?"

The woman had not spoken. For her, stoic-bred though she was, it was impossible to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger from the abstract and menacing thing for which he stood. Now she gulped down a hot and inhospitable impulse of refusal and said briefly to her husband, "You kin invite him ef ye've a mind ter, Cal. I won't."

The officer flushed in embarrassment. Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are frequently endowed with gentle natures, and this mission was not of Beaver's own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with nothing of the sportsman's zest.

"I reckon I mout es well git over an' done with all ther onpleasant jobs I've got on hand," he announced, awkwardly, "air ye willin' ter waive extradition, Ken, or does ye aim ter fight goin' back? Hit's jest a matter of time either way – but ye've got the privilege of choosin'."

The man he had come after was carefully folding the warrant of arrest along its folded lines as though it were important to preserve the exact creasing of the paper.

"Does I keep this hyar thing, Jake," he asked, "or give hit back to ye?"

"Keep hit," replied the sheriff, with an equal gravity. "Hit b'longs ter you."

There was a brief silence after that then Thornton said:

"This is a right grave matter ter me, Jake. Afore I decides what ter do I've got ter hev speech with some of my neighbours."

The foreign official inclined his head.

"I hain't drapped no hint ter no man es ter what business brought me hyar," he volunteered. "I 'lowed ter talk with ye in private fust. I knows full well I'm amongst yore friends over hyar – an' I've got ter trust myself in yore hands. This hain't no welcome task, Ken, any way ye looks at hit."

"I gives ye my hand, Jake," the accused reassured his accuser, "no harm hain't goin' ter come ter ye. Come on indoors and sot ye a cheer."

Parish Thornton stood under the black walnut again that afternoon and with his jackknife he was carving a small basket out of one of the walnuts that had fallen at his feet. About him stood a group including the custodian of "the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia" and the man who held like responsibility for the state of Kentucky.

Between the two, unexpressed but felt, lay the veiled hostility that had grown up through generations of "crossing the border" to hide out; the hostility of conflicting jurisdictions.

Hump Doane and Jim Rowlett were there, and Aaron Capper and Lincoln Thornton – a handful who could speak with the voice of public opinion thereabouts, and while he carved industriously at his watch-charm basket, Parish Thornton glanced at the cripple.

"Mr. Doane," he said, "once, standin' on this identical spot, ye asked me a question thet I refused ter answer. This man hes come over hyar, now, ter answer hit fer me. Jake, tell these folks what brought ye hither."

The sheriff cleared his throat and by way of preface remarked: "I didn't come of my own choosin', gentlemen. Ther state of Virginny accuses Parish Thornton of ther wilful murder of John Turk. I'm high-sheriff over in Lee County whar hit tuck place."

A grave restraint prevented any expression of surprise, but all the eyes were turned upon Thornton himself, and the accused gave back even glance for even glance.

"Now I'm goin' ter give ye my side of hit," he began, though to give his side in full justice he would have had to reveal a secret which he had no intent of disclosing.

"My sister, Sally, married John Turk an' he abused her till she couldn't endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high an' she'd hev cut her tongue out afore she'd hev told her neighbours ther way she war misused – but I knowed hit." As he paused his eyes darkened into sombre memory. "I reasoned with John an' he blackguarded me, too, an' ferbid me ter darken his door… Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an' I fared over thar … I went in at ther door an' he war a-maltreatin' her an' chokin' her. I railed out … an' he hurt her wusser … hit war his life or her'n. Ef hit war all ter do over ergin I wouldn't act no different." He paused again and no one offered a comment; so he resumed his statement: "I hain't told ye all of hit, but I reckon thet's enough. Thar warn't no witnesses ter holp me come cl'ar an' ther co'te over thar wouldn't vouchsafe me no justice… Hit's jedge b'longed ter John Turk's kinfolks body an' soul … so I come away."

"I reckon ye'd be plum daft ef ye didn't stay away," remarked the Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance at his colleague from another state. "Virginny officers hain't got no power of arrest in Kaintuck."

The Virginian bit a trifle nervously from a twist of "natural leaf."

"Hit's my bounden duty, though," he declared, staunchly, "ter call on you ter arrest him an' hold him till I gits me them extradition papers from Frankfort – an' then hit's yore bounden duty ter fotch him ter ther state line an' deliver him over ter me."

"I'm ther man thet decides what my duty is," came the swift retort, and Thornton raised a hand to quell incipient argument.

"Thet hain't ther p'int, men," he reminded them. "Ther law kin reach in an' take me out finally. We all knows thet – onless I forsook my home hyar an' lived a refugee, hidin' out. Atter they once diskivered whar I was, I mout jest es well be thar es hyar."

"Ther boy's right," ruled Hump Doane, judicially. "A man kain't beat ther law in ther long run." Then the cripple wheeled on the sheriff.

"Mr. Beaver," he said, "we hain't got no quarrel with ye fer doin' yore plain duty, but whether ye calls this man a criminal over thar in Virginny or not we knows over hyar thet he's a godly upholder of ther law – an' we don't aim ter see him made no scape-goat fer unlawful wrath ef we kin hinder hit. In so fur es we kin legally compass hit we stands ready ter fight ther state of Virginny from hell ter breakfast. All he's got ter do is jest give us ther word."

"I hain't seekin' ter contrary ye none es ter thet, Mr. Doane," the officer gave ready assurance.

"Ef Mr. Thornton takes my counsel," went on the deformed leader, "he'll bid ye go back thar an' tell them folks ye comes from thet ef they'll admit him ter bail, an' pledge him a fa'r day in co'te, he'll come back thar without no conflict when ye sends fer him. But ye've got ter hev 'em agree ter let him stay over hyar till ther co'te sets ter try him. Es fer his bond ye kin put hit at any figger ye likes so long es thar's land enough an' money enough amongst us ter kiver hit."

The Virginia sheriff turned to the Kentucky officer.

"Will ye arrest this man an' hold him safe till I gits my order?" he demanded, and the Kentuckian in turn inquired of Parish, "Will ye agree to hold yoreself subject ter prompt response?"

Thornton nodded and casually the local officer replied:

"All right, Mr. Beaver. Ye kin ride on home now whenever ye gits ready. I've got this prisoner in a custody thet satisfies me right now."

CHAPTER XXV

Had those enterprising spirits who had undertaken to organize a vigilance committee, modelled upon the old Ku Klux, been avowedly outlaws, banded together only for the abuse of power, their efforts would have died of inanition. The sort of lawlessness that has given the Appalachian mountaineer his wild name is one that the outer world understands as little as the hillsman understands the outer world, and the appeal which the organization made was a warped and distorted sense of justice, none the less sincere.

So now though the organizers of the new body were scheming rascals, actuated by the basest and meanest motives, the tissue and brawn of their recruiting was built up from the adventure-love of youth or the grim and honest insurgency of maturer age.

As yet the membership was small and it met in shifting places of rendezvous, with weird rites of oath-bound secrecy. To-night it was gathered around a campfire in a gorge between towering cliffs to which access was gained by a single and narrow gut of alley-way which was sentinel-guarded.