The Tempering

"Hell's red fire an' Hell's black smoke – hit hain't only ter say politics this time." The response came with oracular impressiveness while the speaker twirled his black moustache. "Hit savours a damn sight more of civil war!"

"I heered ther Democrat candidate speak at Marlin Town," contributed Asa with tepid interest. "I 'lowed he hed a right hateful countenance – cruel-like, thet is ter say."

Here spoke the estimate of partisanship, but Saul straightened in his chair and his eyes took on a sinister glitter.

"Thet's ther identical thing thet brought me hyar ter ther hills. I come ter bear tidin's ter upstandin' men like you. We're goin' ter need ye, an' onlessen we all acts tergether our rights air goin' ter be everlastin'ly trompled in ther dust."

Gregory crumpled a handful of "natural leaf" and filled his pipe-bowl. His gesture was as lazy and easy as that of a purring cat. "Oh, pshaw, Saul," he deprecated, "I don't take no master interest in politics nohow. I always votes ther Republican ticket because I was raised up ter do thet – like most everybody else in these mountings."

"But I'm a'tellin' ye this time thet hain't agoin' ter be enough ter do!" The visitor leaned forward and spoke with impassioned tenseness. "I've been dwellin' down thar amongst rich folks in ther flat Bluegrass country an' I knows what I'm sayin'. Ther Democrat air es smart es Satan's circuit-rider. Y'ars back he jammed a crooked law through ther legislater jest a'lookin' forward ter this time an' day. Now he's cocked an' primed ter steal ther office, like he stole ther nomination, an' human freedom will be dead an' buried for all time in ther State of old Kaintuck."

Into Gregory's eyes as he listened stole an awakening light of interest and indignation. Up here among the eyries of eagles the threat of tyranny is hateful beyond words, and its invocation is a conjure spell of incitement. But at once Asa's face cleared to an amused smile as he inquired, "How does he aim ter compass all thet deviltry – ef ther people votes in ther other feller?"

The momentum of his own philippics had brought Saul Fulton to his feet. Down there where one party had been split in twain and the other had slipped all leash of decorum's restraint, he had been virulently inoculated with the virus of hate, and now, since his memory was tenacious, he swept, without crediting quotations, into a freshet of argument that echoed every accusation and exaggerated every warning of that merciless campaign.

For a half hour he talked, with the fiery volubility of a prophet inciting fanatics to a holy war, while his simple audience listened, yielding by subconscious stages to his bitter text. At last he came to the point toward which he had been progressing.

"Down thar ther purse-proud Demmycrats calls us folks blood-thirsty barbarians. Ter th'ar high-falutin' fashion o' thinkin' we're meaner than ther very dirt under th'ar feet. Even ther niggers scorns us an' calls us 'pore white trash.' When this man once gits in power he aims ter make us feel ther weight of his disgust an' ter rule us henceforth with bayonets an' milishy muskets. Afore this matter ends up thar's liable ter be some shovellin' of graveyard dirt."

"Looks right smart like hit mout be needful," acquiesced Gregory; and Saul knew that he had won a convert to action.

The insidious force of the visitor's appeal to mountain passion had stolen into the veins of his hearers until it was not strange that their eyes narrowed and their lips compressed into lines of ominous straightness.

"Now this air what I come hyar ter name ter ye, Asa." Saul reseated himself and waved his cigar stub impressively. "Troublesome days air a'comin' on an' us mountain men hev need ter lay by our own private grievances an' stand tergether fer a spell."

Asa's face darkened, with the air of a man who has discovered the catch in an outwardly fair proposition.

"What air ye a'drivin' at?" he demanded shortly, and his visitor hastened to explain.

"I wants thet all ther good Republicans in this deestrict shell send a telegram ter our candidate thet we've done made a truce to our enmities hyar at home, an' thet we all stands shoulder ter shoulder, Gregories an' Carrs, Fultons an' Blairs alike, ter defend our rights es freemen."

Asa Gregory rose slowly and stood on his hearth with his feet wide apart and his head thrown back. From straight shoulders to straight legs he was as unmoving, for a space, as bronze, but when he spoke his voice came out of his deep chest with the resonance of low and far-reaching thunder.

"Saul," he began, with a guarded deliberation, "I stands indicted before ther High Co'te fer ther killin' of old man Carr. Ther full four seasons of ther year hain't rolled round yit sence I buried my daddy out thar with a Carr bullet drilled through his heart. Ther last time any man preached a truce ter us Gregorys we agreed ter hit – an' my daddy was lay-wayed an' shot ter death whilest we war still a'keepin' hit plum faithful. Ther man thet seeks ter beguile me now with thet same fashion of talk comes askin' me ter trust my life an' ther welfare of my woman an' child ter ther faithless word of liars!"

His voice leaped suddenly out of its difficult timbre of restraint and rang echoing against the chinked timbers of the walls.

"I've done suffered grievously enough already by trustin' ter infamy. From now on I'll watch them enemies thet's nighest me fust – an' them thet's further off atterwards. My God A'mighty, ef ye warn't my own blood kin, I couldn't hardly suffer ye ter tarry under my roof atter ye'd give voice ter sich a proffer!"

Araminta Gregory had listened from the kitchen door but now she swept to her husband's side and turned upon her visitor the wrath of blazing eyes and a heaving bosom.

"We hain't askin' no odds of nobody," she flared in a panting transport of fury. "Asa kin safeguard his own so long es he hain't misled with lyin' an' false pledges."

"Don't fret yoreself none, Araminty," said the man, reassuring her with a brusque but not ungentle hand on her trembling arm. Then he turned with regained composure to Saul, as he inquired: "Does ther Carrs proffer ter drap tha'r hell-bent detarmination ter penitenshery me or hang met?"

Somewhat dubiously Fulton shook his head in negation.

"I reckon they 'low ye'd only mistrust 'em ef they proffered thet. All they proposes is thet ontil this election's over an' sottled – not jest at ther polls, but sottled fer good an' all – thar won't be no hand raised erginst you ner yourn. I reckon ye kin bide yore time thet long, an' when this racket's over ye'll be plum free ter settle yore own scores." He paused, then added insinuatingly, "Every week a trial's put off hit gits harder fer ther prosecution. Witnesses gits scattered like an' men kinderly disremembers things."

Asa Gregory, confronted with a new and complicated problem, sank back into his seat and his attitude became one of deep meditation. He glanced at the bowl of his dead pipe, leaned forward and drew a burning fagot from the fire for its relighting; then, at length, he spoke with a judicial deliberation.

"This hyar's a solid Republican deestrick. We don't need no truce ter make us vote ther ticket."

The messenger from the outer world shook a dubious head. "Votin' ther ticket hain't enough. Thar's ergoin' ter be a heap of fancy mathematics in tallyin' thet vote all over ther State. Up hyar we've got ter make up fer any deefault down below. We kain't do thet without we all stands solid. Ef thar's any bickerin' them crooks'll turn hit ter account, but ef we elects our man he hain't ergoin' ter fergit us."

"So fur es thet goes," mused Asa, "I hain't a'seekin' no favours from ther Governor."

"Why hain't ye?" Saul lowered his voice a little for added effect. "Ye faces a murder trial, don't ye? I reckon a Republican Governor, next time, mout be right willin' ter grant ye a pardon ef ye laid by yore own grievances fer ther good of ther party – hit wouldn't be no more'n fa'r jestice."

"What guaranty does these enemies of mine offer me?" inquired Asa coolly. "Does they aim ter meet me half way?"

"Hit's like this," Saul spoke now with undisguised excitement: "Ther boys air holdin' a rally ternight over at ther incline… A big lawyer from Loueyville is makin' a speech thar… They wants thet I shell fotch ye back along with me – an' thet ye shan't tote no rifle-gun ner no weepin' of airy sort. Tom Carr'll be thar too – unarmed."

At the name Asa Gregory flinched as if he had been smitten in the face, but the messenger went persuasively on:

"Thar'll be es many of our folks thar es his'n. They'll be consortin' tergither plum peaceable – twell ye walks inter ther room. Them Gregories an' them Carrs air all armed. Hit's jest you an' Tom thet hain't. When we comes inter ther place, Tom'll start down ther aisle to'rds ye – an' you'll start up to'rds Tom." The speaker paused, and Asa prompted in a low, restrained voice, though his face was chalky pale with smothered emotion:

"Go on! I'm hearkenin'."

Saul shrugged his shoulders. "Wa'al, thet's all. Ye knows ther rest es well es I does. Them fellers on both sides air trustin' their lives ter ther two of ye. Ef you an' Tom shakes hands they'll all ride home quiet as turtle-doves – an' take off th'ar coats ter beat this man fer Governor. Ef you an' Tom don't shake hands – or ef one or t'other of ye makes a single fightin' move, every gun under thet roof'll start poppin' an ther place'll be a slaughter house. They all knows thet full well. Ther lawyer knows hit, too – an' he's a'riskin' hit fer ther sake of his party."

The indicted man took a step forward. "Stand up hyar an' look me in ther eyes," he commanded shortly, and, when Fulton rose, they stood, face to face, so close that each could feel the breath of the other's lips.

The steady brown eyes bored into the shiftier pupils of greenish-gray with an implacable searching, and Asa's voice came in an uncompromising hardness:

"Saul, ye're askin' me ter trust ye right far. I hain't got nothin' but yore word fer hit thet thar'll be airy man over thar at thet meetin' but them thet seeks my life. This may be what ye says hit is or hit may be a trap – but ye're a kinsman of mine, an' I've got a license ter believe ye – oncet. Ef ye're lyin' ter me, ye're mighty apt ter hev ter pay fer hit."

"Ef I'm lyin' ter ye, Asa," came the prompt response, "I'm ready ter pay fer hit."

Gregory drew on his coarse socks and heavy shoes. "Alright," he acceded curtly, "I'm a'goin' along with ye now, an' I reckon we'd better hasten."

"Don't go, Asa," pleaded Araminta. "Don't take no sich chanst." But as her husband looked into her eyes she slowly nodded her head. "Ye're right," she said falteringly. "I was jest skeered because I'm so worrited. Of course ye've got ter go. Hit's fer yore country."

When the door had closed the woman dropped limply into a chair. Her pupils were distended and her fingers twisted in aimless gropings. After a while she looked about a little wildly for Boone Wellver. It was something to have his companionship during the hours of suspense – but the boy's chair, too, was empty. His rifle was missing from its corner.

She know now what had happened. Boone had slipped uninvited and secretly out into the night. He had said nothing, but he meant to follow the pair unseen, and if he found his hero threatened, there would be one armed follower at his back.

From the crib in one corner rose an uneasy whimper and Araminta went to soothe her baby at her breast.

CHAPTER IV

When Boone surreptitiously slipped out of the house he had plunged recklessly into the thorn-tangle for a shorter cut than the two men would take: a road of precipitous peril but of moments saved.

If the possibility which Saul had admitted came to fruition and the guns started popping, the peril lay not in the course of subsequent minutes but at the pregnant instant when Asa Gregory's face was first seen in the door. It would be in that breathing-space that the issue would find settlement, and it would hang, hair-balanced, on the self-restraint of two men whose hard-held hatred might break bounds and overwhelm them as each thought of the father slain by violence. It would be a parlous moment when their eyes, full of stored-up and long-curbed rancour, first engaged and their hostile palms were required to meet and clasp.

Young as he was, Boone understood these matters. He knew how the resolve which each had undertaken might collapse into swift destruction as the hot tides rushed into their temples. If their mutual concession of manner was not balanced to exact nicety – if either Tom or Asa seemed to hold back and throw upon the other the brunt of the difficult conciliation by so much as a faltering stride – there would be chaos – and Boone meant to be there in time.

In this pocketed bit of wilderness, the incline had been built years ago, and it had been a challenge to Nature's mandate of isolation.

As the crow flew, the railroad that might afford an outlet to market was not so many miles away, but it might as well have been ten times as distant. Between lay a wall of hills interposing its grim prohibition with a timbered cornice lifted twenty-five hundred feet towards the sky and more than a day's journey separated those gaps where wheels could scale and cross. Long ago local and visionary enthusiasts had built a huge warehouse on a towering pinnacle with an incline of track dropping dizzily down from it to the creek far below. Its crazy little cars had been hauled up by a cable wound on a drum with the motive force of a straining donkey-engine. But so ambitious an enterprise had not survived the vicissitudes of hard times. Its simple machinery had rusted; its tracks ran askew with decay upon their warped underpinning of teetering struts.

Now the warehouse stood dry-rotting and unkempt, its spaces regularly tenanted only by the owl and bat. Through its unpatched roof one caught, at night, the peep of stars and its hulking sides leaned under the buffet of the winds which raced, screaming, around the shoulder of the mountain.

Towards this goal Boone was hurrying, forgetful now of any divided standards of thought, thinking only of the kinsman whom his boyhood had exalted with ardent hero-worship – and of that kinsman's danger. A rowelling pressure of haste drove him, while snares of trailing creepers, pitfalls blotted into darkness and the thickness of jungle-like undergrowth handicapped him with many stubborn difficulties.

Sometimes he fell and scrambled up again, bruised and growling but undiscouraged. Sometimes he forsook even the steep grade of the foot trail for shorter cut-offs where he pulled himself up semi-perpendicular walls of cliff, trusting to a hand-grip on hanging root or branch and a foothold on almost nothing.

But when he was still a long way off he saw a pale flare against the sky which he knew was a bonfire outside the warehouse, and by the brightening of that beacon from pallor to crimson glow he measured his progress.

Inside the building itself another battle against time was being fought: a battle to hold the attention of a crowd in the background of whose minds lurked the distrait suspense of waiting for a graver climax than that of oratorical peroration. About the interior blazed pine torches and occasional lanterns with tin reflectors. Even this unaccustomed effort at illumination failed to penetrate the obscurity of the corners or to carry its ragged brightness aloft into the rafters. Beyond the sooty formlessness of encroaching shadows one felt rather than saw the walls, with their rifts through which gusty draught caused the torches to flare and gutter, sending out the incense of their resin.

Between the Circuit Judge, before whom Asa must face trial and the County Judge, sat Basil Prince, the principal speaker of the evening, and his quiet eyes were missing nothing of the mediaevalism of the picture.

Yet one might have inferred from his tranquillity of expression that he had never addressed a gathering where the fitful glare of torches had not shone upon repeating rifles and coon skin caps: where the faces had not been set and grim as though keyed to an ordeal of fire and lead.

He was noting how every fresh arrival hesitated near the door and glanced about him. In that brief pause and scrutiny he recognized the purport of a division, for as each newcomer stepped to the left or the right of the centre aisle he thereby proclaimed himself a Carr or a Gregory – taking shrewd thought of clan-mobilization. Then as a low drone of talk went up from the body of the house and a restless shuffling of feet, the speaker and his reception committee could not escape the realization of an ugly tension; of an undertow of anxiety moving deep beneath the surface affectation of calm. A precarious spirit brooded there.

The Circuit Judge leaned over toward Prince, whispering nervously through a smile of courteous commonplace: "Maybe we've made a mistake to attempt it, General. They seem dangerously restless and tight-strung, and they've got to be so gripped that they'll forget everything but your words for a spell!" The speaker, in his abstraction, relapsed abruptly out of judicial dignity into mountain crudity of speech. "Hit's ergoin' ter be like holdin' back a flood tide with a splash-dam. Thank God ef any man kin do thet, I reckon hit's you."

The Louisville lawyer nodded, "I'll try, sir," was his brief response.

As the speaker of the moment dropped back, General Prince came to his feet and with him rose the Circuit Judge who was to introduce him. That prefatory address was brief, for the infection of restiveness was spreading and loosely held interests were gravitating to mischief.

Yet as General Prince stood quietly waiting, with his slender and elderly figure straight poised and his fine face, for all its intellectuality, remaining the steel-jawed face of a fighter, the shuffling feet quieted and straying glances came to focus. There was a commanding light in the unquailing eyes and these men who knew few celebrities from the world without, knew both his name and his record. They gazed steadfastly at him because, though he came now as a friend he had in another day come as a foe, and the weight of his inimical hand had come down to them through the mists of the past as word-of-mouth. In the days of the war between the States, the mountains had thrust their wedge of rock and granite-loyal Unionism through the vitals of Confederate territory. While the mobility of the gray forces were balked there to a heavy congestion, one command, bitterly hated and grudgingly admired, had seemed capable of defying mountain ranges and of laughing at torrents. Like a scathe that admitted no gainsaying, it came from nowhere, struck, without warning, and was gone again unpunished. Its name had been a metaphor for terror.

Morgan's Men! That brilliant organization of partisan raiders who slept in their saddles and smote Vulcan-like. The world knew of them and the Cumberlands had felt their blows. General Basil Prince had been one of their commanders. Now, a recognized authority on the use of cavalry, a lawyer of distinction, a life-long Democrat, he stood before Republicans pouring out the vials of his wrath upon the head of the man whom he charged with having betrayed and disrupted his own party and with attempting to yoke freedom into bondage.

Faces bent forward with eyes lighting into an altered mood, and the grimness which spelled danger relaxed grudgingly into attention.

The speaker did not underestimate his task. It was not enough to play the spell-binder for a definite period. He must unflaggingly hold them vassals to his voice until the entrance of Asa Gregory gave him pause.

Never had Basil Prince spoken with a more compelling force or a fierier power of invective, and his voice had rung like a bugle for perhaps three-quarters of an hour when in the shadowed darkness beyond the walls the figure of a boy halted, heavily panting.

Boone paused only for a little, testing the condition of his rifle's breech and bolt, recovering his spent breath. Then he slipped nearer and peered through the slit where a board had been broken away in the wall itself. Within he saw figures bending forward and intent – and his brow knit into furrows as he took in at a glance the division of the clans, each to its separate side of the house. They had come, Saul said, to bring peace out of dissension, but they had paradoxically arranged themselves in readiness for conflict.

Through a gaping door at the rear, of which he knew, and which lay as invisible as a rent in a black curtain, because the shadows held undisputed sway back there, the boy made a noiseless entrance. Up a ladder, for the rungs of which he had to feel blindly, he climbed to a perch on the cross-beams, under the eaves, and still he was as blanketed from view as a bat in an unlighted cavern. The only dim ghost of glow that went with him were two faint phosphorescent points where he had rubbed the sights of his rifle with the moistened heads of matches.

For the eloquence of the speaker, which would at another time have enthralled him, he had now no thought, because lying flattened on a great square-hewn timber, he was searching the crowd for the face of Tom Carr.

Soon he made it out below him, to his right, and slowly he trained his rifle upon the breast beneath the face.

That was all he had to do for the present – except to wait.

When Asa came in, if matters went badly and if Tom made a motion to his holster or a gesture to his minions, there would be one thing more, but it involved only the crooking of a finger which snuggled ready in the trigger-guard.

The boy's muscles were badly cramped up there as the minutes lengthened and multiplied. The timber was hard and the air chill, but he dared not invite discovery by free movement.

Then suddenly with a short and incisive sentence following on longer and more rounded phrases, the speaker fell silent. Boone could not properly appreciate the ready adroitness with which General Prince had clipped his oratory short without the seeming of a marred effect. He only knew that the voice spoke crisply and halted and that the speaker was reaching out his hand, with matter-of-fact gesture, toward the gourd in the water bucket on the table.

Instantly the shuffling of feet grated its signal of an awakening apprehension – an uneasiness which had been temporarily lulled. There was an instant, after that, of dead hush, and then a twisting of necks as all eyes went to the door.

The men on each side of the house drew a little closer and more compactly together, widening and emphasizing the line of the aisle between; becoming two distinct crowds where there had been one, loosely joined. Hands gestured instinctively toward guns laid by, and halted in cautious abeyance. Through the cobwebbed spaciousness and breathless quiet of the place sounded the ill-omened quaver of a barn owl.

In the door stood Asa Gregory, his hands hanging at his sides with a studied inertness as his eyes travelled slowly, appraisingly, about the place. His attitude and expression alike were schooled into passiveness, but as he saw another figure rise from just in front of the stage and stand in momentary irresolution, the muscles of his jaw hardened and into his eyes flashed a defiant gleam. His lids contracted to the narrowness of slits, as though struggling to shut out some sudden and insufferable glare. His chest heaved in a gasp-like breath and the hands which he sought to keep hanging, slowly closed and clenched as muscles tauten under an electric shock. Then, as if in obedience to impulses beyond volition, the right hand came upward toward the left armpit – where his pistol holster should have been.

At the sight of his enemy rising there before him, Asa Gregory had seen red, and the length of the aisle away, Tom Carr stood struggling with an identical transport of reeling self-control. Like a reflection in a mirror his face too blackened in sinister hatred and his hand too moved toward the empty holster.

The strained tableau held only for a breathing space, but it was long enough for acceptance as a signal. It was long enough to afford the orator of the evening a swift, photographic impression of flambeaux giving back the glint of drawn pistols to right and left of the aisle; of the ducking of timid heads; of a crowd holding a pose as tense and ready as runners set on their marks – yet breathlessly awaiting the overt signal.