The Tempering

To the front of the platform, with that derisive introduction, calmly – even coldly, stepped a dark, smooth-shaven man, over whose stocky shoulders and well-rounded chest a frock coat was tightly buttoned.

For a while the Candidate stood looking out, gauging his audience, and from him there seemed to emanate an assurance of power before his lips parted. A heavy lock of coal-black hair fell over his forehead, across almost disdainfully cold eyes went sooty lashes, and dark brows met above the prominent nose. The whole face seemed drawn in bold charcoal strokes, uncompromising of line and feature – a portrayal of force.

Then the resonant voice broke silence, and though it came calmly and moderately pitched, it went out clarion-clear over the crowd like the note of a fox horn.

"Some one out there shouted – 'Next governor of hell!'" he began without preamble. "I grant you that if any region needs improved government it is hell, and if there is a state on this earth where a man might hope to qualify himself for that task, it is this state. Let me try that first, my friend. I believe in myself, but I am only human."

He launched forthright into arraignment of his enemies with sledge-blows of denunciation untempered by any concession to time, place or condition, and though scowls grew vindictively black about him, he knew that he was holding his audience.

He was a Vulcan forging thunders with words and destructive batteries of bolts with phrases, and Boone Wellver – trembling with excitement as a pointer puppy trembles with the young eagerness of the covey-scent in his nostrils – seemed to be in the presence of a miracle; the miracle of eloquence.

"My God," breathed the less impressionable Asa Gregory under his breath, "but thet feller hes a master gift fer lyin'!"

At the end, with one clenched fist raised high, the speaker thundered out his final words of defiance: "The fight is on, and I believe in fighting. I ask no quarter and I fear no foe!"

Again he paused, and again save for the valiant enthusiasm on the platform at his back, he met with no response except a grim and negative silence.

But this disconcerting stillness was abruptly ripped asunder by a pistol shot and a commotion of confused voices, rising where figures began to eddy and mill at the outskirts. The reception committee closed hastily and protectingly about the candidate, whose challenge seemed to have been accepted by some irresponsible gun-fighter, but he thrust them back with a face of unaltered and stony calmness. Though he had finished, he continued to stand at the front with hands idly resting on the platform rail as if meaning to demonstrate his contempt for anything like retreat.

While he still tarried there a tall figure elbowed its way through the crowd until it stood near. It was the figure of Asa Gregory, and, raising a hand for recognition, it called out in a full-chested voice: "Thet shot war fired by a feller thet war full of white licker – an' they're takin' him ter ther jail-house now. I reckon yore doctrine hain't hardly converted nobody hyarabouts – but we don't aim ter insult no visitor."

Victor McCalloway had come to Cyrus Spradling's house to remain until he could arrange a more permanent residence. The purpose that lay behind his coming was one which he had not felt called upon to explain, and though he had much to learn of this new place of abode, still he had come forearmed with some of the cardinals of a necessary understanding.

They were an incurious people with whom he had cast his lot, content with their remoteness, and it was something that here a man could lose himself from questions touching the past, so long as he answered frankly those of the present. It suited McCalloway to seal the back pages and the bearded men evinced no wish to penetrate them.

Before the snow flew the newcomer was to be housed under his own roof-tree, and today in answer to the verbal announcement that he was to have a "working" on the land he had bought, the community was present, armed with hammer and saw, with adze and plane, mobilized under the auspices of Cyrus Spradling who moved, like a shaggy patron saint, among them.

There were men, working shoulder to shoulder, whose enmities were deep and ancient, but who today were restrained by the common spirit of volunteer service to a neighbour. Cyrus had seen to it that the gathering at McCalloway's "house-raising" should not bear the prejudicial colour of partisanship, but that Carrs and Gregories alike should have a hand in the activities which were going robustly forward at the head of Snag Ridge.

Back of Cedar Mountain no architect was available and no builders' union afforded or withheld labour, but every man was carpenter and artisan in his own right, and some were "practiced corner-men" as well.

Through the sun-flooded day with its Indian summer dream along the skyline their axes rang in accompaniment to their homely jests, and the earnest whine of their saws went up with the minors of voices raised in the plaintive strains of folk-lore ballads.

The only wage accepted was food and drink. They would have thought as readily of asking payment for participation in the rough festivities of the "infare" with which the mountain groom brings his bride from her wedding to his own house on a pillion at the back of his saddle.

Tomorrow some of these same men, meeting in the roadway, would perhaps eye each other with suspicion. Riding on, after greetings, they would go with craned necks, neither trusting the other to depart unwatched, but today the rude sanctuary of hospitality to the stranger rested over them and the timbers that went up were raised by the hands of friends and enemies alike.

But toward sunset the newcomer chanced upon a fight that the simple code had not safeguarded and that had gained headway before his interference.

Down by the creek-bed, with no audience, he found two boys rolling in a smother of dust and, until he remembered that the hill code of "fist and skull" bars neither shod-toe nor bared tooth, he was shocked at the unmitigated savagery of the combat.

The strenuous pair rolled in a mad embrace, and as he approached, one of the boys – whose back alone he could see – came to the top of the writhing heap. While this one gouged, left handed, at eyes which the other attempted to cover, his right hand whipped out a jack-knife which he sought to open with his teeth. Out of the commotion came an animal-like incoherence of snarls and panting profanity, and Victor McCalloway caught the top boy by his shoulder and dragged him forcibly away from what threatened to be maiming or worse.

So pried from his victim, on the verge of victory, the boy with a bloody and unrecognized face stood for an instant heaving of breast and infuriated, then wrenching himself free from the detaining hand, he gave a leap as sudden as that of a frightened buck and disappeared behind the screen of the laurel.

The other figure, with an eye blackened and bleeding from the raw scratches of finger-nails about the lids, came more slowly to his feet, his breath rasping with passion and exhaustion. He stood there before his would-be rescuer – and McCalloway recognized Boone Wellver.

"I'd hev licked him – so his own mammy wouldn't 'a' knowed him ef ye hadn't 'a' bust in on me," he panted. "I'd done had him down oncet afore an' I war jest erbout ter turn him under ergin."

A light of suppressed drollery glinted into the eyes of the man whose ruddy face remained otherwise unsmiling.

"It looked to me as though you were in a situation where nothing could save you but reinforcements – or surrender," he commented, and the heaving body of the rescued boy grew rigid while his begrimed face flamed with chagrin.

"Surrender – knock under – ter him!" He spat out the words with a venomous disgust. "Thet feller war a Blair! Did ye ever heer of a Gregory hollerin' 'enough!' ter a Blair, yit!"

McCalloway stood looking down with an amusement which he was considerate enough to mask. He knew that Boone, though his surname was Wellver, was still in all the meaning of feud parlance a Gregory and that in the bitterness of his speech spoke not only individual animosity but generations of vendetta. So he let the lad have his say uninterrupted, and Boone's words ran freshet-like with the churn and tumble of his anger. "Ye jest misjudged he war a'lickin' me, because ye seed him on top an' a'gougin' at my eye. But I'd done been on top o' him – an' I'd a got thar ergin. Ef you'd noted whar I'd done chawed his ear at he wouldn't 'a' looked so good ter ye, I reckon."

"Suppose he had gotten that knife open." The man still spoke with that unpatronizing gravity which carries an untold weight of conviction to a boy's mind. "What would he have done?"

"I reckon he'd a'gutted me – but I didn't nuver aim ter let him git hit open."

"Are you a fighter by habit, Boone?"

Something in the intonation caused the lad to flush afresh, this time with the feeling that he had been unduly bragging, and he responded in a lowered voice. "I hain't nuver tuck part in no gun-battles yit – but when hit comes ter fist an' skull, I'm accounted ter be a right practiced knocker an' I kin rass'le right good. What made ye ask me thet question?"

McCalloway held the angelic blue eyes, so paradoxically set in that wrath-enflamed face, with his own steady gray ones, and spoke quietly:

"Because if you are going to be a fighting man, it's important that you should fight properly, I thought perhaps you'd like to talk to me about it sometime. You see, I've been fighting all my life. It's been my profession."

Over the freckled face surged a wave of captivated interest. The Blair boy was forgotten and the voice thrilled into earnest solicitation. "Would ye l'arn me more about hit some time? What style of fightin' does ye foller?"

"The fair kind, I trust. Civilized warfare. The trade of soldiering."

"I hain't nuver follered no unfa'r sort nuther," disclaimed Boone, and his companion smiled enigmatically while he replied meditatively,

"What is fair or unfair – what is courageous or cowardly – is largely a matter of viewpoint. Some day I dare say you'll go out into the world beyond the hills and out there you'll find that gouging eyes and chewing ears isn't called fair – that shooting an enemy from ambush isn't called courageous."

That was a doctrine, Boone felt, which savoured of sacrilege. If it were categorically true then his own people were cowards – and to his ardent hero worship the Gregories and the Wellvers were exemplars of high bravery, yet this man was no ordinary individual, and he spoke from a wisdom and experience based on a lifetime of soldiering. A seed of dilemma had fallen into the fallow soil of the lad's questioning mind, and as he stood there in a swirl of perplexity he heard the other voice explaining with a sort of comforting reassurance, "As I said, notions of right and wrong vary with locality and custom – but it's good for a man to know more than one standard – one set of ideas. If you ever go out in the world you'll need that knowledge."

After a period of reflection the boy demanded bluntly,

"Whar-at war ye a'soldierin'?"

For the first time, McCalloway's glance hardened and his tone sharpened. He had not meant to throw open the discussion to a wide review of his own past.

"If you and I are going to be good friends, you mustn't ask too many questions," he said curtly. "It doesn't make a boy popular."

"I axes yore pardon; I didn't aim at no offence." The apology was prompt, yet puzzled, and carried with it a note of injured dignity. "I 'lowed ye proffered ter tell me things – an' even ef ye told me all ye knowed, I wouldn't go 'round blabbin' no-whars. I knows how ter hold my own counsel."

This time it was the seasoned man of experience who flushed. He felt that he had first invited and then rebuffed a natural inquiry, and so he, in turn, spoke apologetically: "I shall tell you things that may be useful – but I sha'n't answer every question."

After a long silence Boone spoke again, with the altered voice of diffidence:

"I reckon I hain't got nothin' more ter say," he contributed. "I reckon I'll be farin' on."

"You looked as if you were spilling over with things to say."

"I had hit in head ter say some sev'ral things," admitted the youthful clansman, "but they was all in ther manner of axin' more questions, so I reckon I'll be farin' on."

Victor McCalloway caught the deep hunger for information that showed out of those independent young eyes, and he caught too the untutored instinct of politeness, as genuine and unaffected as that of a desert Sheik, which forced repression. He laid a kindly hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Go ahead and ask your questions, then," he directed, "and I'll answer what I like and refuse to answer the rest. Is that a fair arrangement?"

The brown face glowed. "Thet's es fa'r es airy thing kin be," was the eager response. "I hain't nuver seed nothin' but jest these hyar hills – an' sometimes hit kinderly seems like ter me thet ef I kain't light out an' see all ther balance, I'll jest plain swell up an' bust with ther cravin'."

"You study history – and geography, don't you, Boone?"

"Huh-huh." The tousled head nodded. "But thar's a passel of thet book stuff thet a man kain't believe nohow. Hit ain't reasonable."

"What books have you read?"

"Every single damn one thet I could git my hands on – but thet hain't been no lavish plenty." With a manner of groping for some point of contact with the outer world, he added, "I've got a cousin thet's in ther army, though. He's in ther Philippines right now. Did you soldier in ther Philippines?" Abruptly Boone broke off, and then hastily he prompted as he raised a hand in a gesture of caution, "Don't answer thet thar question ef ye hain't got a mind ter! I jest axed hit heedless-like without studyin' what I war a'doin'."

McCalloway laughed aloud. "I'll answer it. No, I've never soldiered in the Philippines nor anywhere under the American flag. My fighting has all been with what you call the 'outlanders.'"

CHAPTER III

McCalloway's house had been chinked and sealed within a few weeks and now he was living under its roof. Boone had been out there often, and one day when he went on to Asa Gregory's cabin his mind was unsettled with the ferment of conflicting standards. Heretofore Asa had been his sole and sufficient hero. Now there were two, and it was dawning upon him, with a travail of dilemma, that between the essentials of their creeds lay an irreconcilable divergence.

As the boy reached his kinsman's doorstep in the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, Asa's "woman" came out and hung a freshly scoured dish-pan on a peg. In her cheeks bloomed a colour and maturity somewhat too full-blown for her twenty years. Asa had married the "purtiest gal" on five creeks, but the gipsy charm of her dark, provocative eyes would die. Her lithe curves would flatten to angularity and the lustre fade out of her hair's burnished masses with a few seasons of drudgery and child-bearing.

"Howdy, Booney," she said in greeting, and, without removing his hat, he demanded curtly, "Whar's Asa at?"

"He ain't come in yit." A suggestion of anxiety sounded through the voice of Araminta Gregory. It was an apprehension which experience failed to mitigate. She had married Asa while he stood charged with homicide. The threat of lurking enemies had shadowed the celebration of wedding and infare. She had borne his child while he sat in the prisoner's dock. Now she was weaning it while he went abroad under bond. One at least knew when the High Court sat, but one could neither gauge nor calculate the less formal menace that lurked always in the laurel – so one could only wait and endeavour to remain clear eyed.

It was twilight before the man himself came in, and he slipped so quietly across the threshold into the uncertain light of the room that Boone, who sat hunched before the unkindled hearth, did not hear his entrance. But in the door-frame of the shed kitchen the wife's taut sense of waiting relaxed in a sigh of relief. Until tomorrow at least the silent fear was leashed.

An hour later, with the heavy doors protectingly barred, the man and the boy who considered himself a man took their seats at the rough table in the lean-to kitchen, but Araminta Gregory did not sit down to meat with them. She would take her place at table when the lordlier sex had risen from it, satisfied, since she was only a woman. She did not even know that the custom whose decree she followed lacked universal sanction, and, not knowing it, she suffered no discontent.

From the hearth where the woman bent over crane and frying-pan, her face hot and crimson, the red and yellow light spilled out into the primitive room, catching, here, the bright colour of drying pepper-pods strung along the rafters – there the duller glint of the house-holder's rifle leaning not far from his hand. With the flare, the shadows of the corners played a wavering hide-and-seek.

Asa ate in abstracted silence, intent upon his side-meat and "shucky-beans," but the boy, who was ordinarily ravenous, only dallied with his food and his freckled face wore the set of a preternatural solemnity.

"Don't ye love these hyar molasses no more, Booney?" inquired Araminta, to whose mind such an unaccustomed abstinence required explanation, and the boy started with the shock of a broken revery and shook his head.

"I don't crave no more of 'em," he replied shortly. Once again his thoughts enveloped him in a silence which he finally broke with a vehement interrogation.

"Asa, did ye ever heer anybody norrate thet hit's cowardly ter shoot an enemy from ther bresh?"

Asa paused, his laden knife suspended midway twixt platter and mouth. For an instant his clear-chiseled features pictured only surprise for the unexpected question – then they hardened as Athenian faces hardened when Plato "corrupted the youth with the raising up of new gods."

"Who's been a'talkin' blamed nonsense ter ye, Boone?" he demanded in a terse manner tinctured with sharpness.

The boy felt his cheeks grow suddenly hot with a quandary of embarrassment. To McCalloway he stood pledged to keep inviolate the confidence of their conversations, and it was only after an awkward pause that he replied with a halting lameness:

"Hit hain't jist p'intedly what nobody's been a'tellin' me. I … I seed in a book whar hit said somethin' ter thet amount." Suddenly with an inspirational light of augmented authority, he added, "The Circuit-rider hisself read outen ther Scriptures suthin' 'bout not doin' no murder."

Asa carried the knife up to his lips and emptied its blade. Having done so, he spoke with a deliberate and humourless sincerity.

"Murder's a right ugly word, Boone, an' one a feller ought ter be kinderly heedful erbout usin'. Barrin' ther Carrs an' Blairs an' sich-like, I don't know nobody mean enough ter foller murderin'. Sometimes a man's p'intedly fo'ced into a killin', but thar's a heap of differ betwixt them two things."

The grave face of the boy was still clouded with his new-born misgivings, and reading that perplexity, his kinsman went on:

"Myself I've done been obleeged ter kill some sev'ral men. I plum deplores hit. I wouldn't hold no high notion of anybody thet tuck ther life of a feller-bein' without he was plum obleeged ter do hit – ner of no man thet didn't ef hit war his cl'ar duty. Hit's done been ther rise of fifty y'ars now since ther war first started up betwixt us an' ther Carrs. Hit warn't none of my doin', but ever since then – off an' on – my kinsfolk an' yourn hes done been shot down from ther la'rel – an' we've done hit back an' sought ter hold ther score even – or a leetle mite better. I've got my choice atween bein' run away from ther land whar I was born at or else" – he let his hand drop back with a simple gesture of rude eloquence until its fingers rested on the leaning rifle – "or else I hev need ter give my enemies ther only style of fightin' thet will avail. Seems like ter me hit'd be right cowardly ter run away."

To the boy these principles had never before needed defence. They had been axioms, yet now he parried with a faltering demurrer:

"Ther books says that, down below, when fellers fights, they does hit in ther open."

"Alright. Thet's ther best way so long as both of 'em air in ther open. But ef one stands out in ther highway an' tother lays back in ther timber, how long does ye reckon ther fight's a'goin' ter last? A man may love ter be above-board – but he's got ter be practical."

It was the man now who sat forgetful of his food, relapsing into a meditative silence. The leaping fire threw dashes of orange high-lights on his temple and jaw angle and in neither pattern of feature nor quality of eye was there that degenerate vacuity which one associates with barbarous cruelty.

His wife, turning just then from the hearth, saw his abstraction – and understood. She knew what tides of anxious thought and bitter reminiscence had been loosed by the boy's questioning, and her own face too stiffened. Asa was thinking of the malign warp and woof which had been woven into the destiny of his blood and of the uncertain tenure it imposed upon his own life-span. He was meditating perhaps upon the wrinkled crone who had been his mother; "fittified" and mumbling inarticulate and unlovely vagaries over her widowed hearth.

But Araminta herself thought of Asa: of the dual menace of assassination and the gallows, and a wave of nauseating terror assailed her. She shook the hair resolutely out of her eyes and spoke casually:

"La! Asa, ye're lettin' yore vittles git plum cold whilst ye sets thar in a brown study." Inwardly she added with a white-hot ferocity of passion, "Ef they lay-ways him, or hangs him, thank God his baby's a man-child – an' I'll know how ter raise hit up ter take a full accountin'!"

But as the man's face relaxed and he reached toward the biscuit plate his posture froze into an unmoving one – for just an instant. From the darkness outside came a long-drawn halloo, and the poised hand swept smoothly sidewise until it had grasped the rifle and swung it clear of the floor. The eye could hardly have followed Asa's rise from his chair. It seemed only that one moment found him seated and the next standing with his body warily inclined and his eyes fixed on the door, while his voice demanded:

"Who's out thar?"

"Hit's me – Saul Fulton. I wants ter have speech with ye."

As the householder stepped forward, Araminta blocked his way, and spoke in hurried syllables, with her hands on his two shoulders. "Hit hain't sca'cely heedful fer ye ter show yoreself in no lighted doorway in ther night time, Asa. Thet's how yore uncle died! I'll open hit an' hev a look, first, my own self."

The husband nodded and stood with the cocked rifle extended, while the wife let down the bar and ushered in a visitor who entered with something of a swagger and the air of one endowed with a worldly wisdom beyond the ordinary.

In raw-boned wiriness and in feature, Saul Fulton was typically a mountaineer, but in dress and affectation of manner he was a nondescript aping the tawdrily and cheaply urban. His dusty hat sat with an impudent tilt on crisp curls glossed with pomade and his stale cigar-butt tipped upward, under a rakish moustache.

Fulton was the sort of mountaineer by whom the outer world misjudges and condemns his race. He had left the backwoods to dwell among "furriners" as a tobacco-raising tenant on a Bluegrass farm, and there he had been mongrelized until he was neither wolf nor house-dog but a thing characterized by the vices of each and the virtues of neither. In him highland shrewdness had deteriorated into furtive cunning, and mountain self-respect had tarnished into the dull discontent of class hatred. But when he came to the hills, clad in shoddy finery to visit men in honest homespun, he bore himself with a cocksure dare-deviltry and malapert condescension. Saul was Asa Gregory's cousin, and since Asa's family still held to the innate courtesies of the barbarian, they received him unquestioningly, fed him, and bade him "Set ye a cheer in front of the chimley-place."

"I heer tell," suggested Asa with casual interest, "thet politics is waxin' middlin' hot down thar in ther settlemints."

After the mountain fashion the host and Boone had kicked off their heavy shoes and spread their bare toes to the warmth of the blaze. Saul, as a man of the world, refrained from this gaucherie.