CHAPTER VII.

When Birt reached the fence, he discovered that the bars were down.

Rufe had forgotten to replace them that afternoon when he drove in the cow to be milked. Despite his absorption, Birt paused to put them up, remembering the vagrant mountain cattle that might stray in upon the corn. He found the familiar little job difficult enough, for it seemed to him that there was never before so black a night.

Even looking upward, he could not see the great wind-tossed boughs of the chestnut-oak above his head. He only knew they were near, because acorns dropped upon the rail in his hands, and rebounded resonantly. But an owl, blown helplessly down the gale, was not much better off, for all its vaunted nocturnal vision. As it drifted by, on the currents of the wind, its noiseless, out- stretched wings, vainly flapping, struck Birt suddenly in the face, and frightened by the collision, it gave an odd, peevish squeak.

Birt, too, was startled for a moment. Then he exclaimed irritably, "Oh, g'way owEL"--realizing what had struck him.

The next moment he paused abruptly. He thought he heard, close at hand, amongst the glooms, a faint chuckle. Something--was it?-- SOMEBODY laughing in the darkness?

He stood intently listening. But now he heard only the down-pour of the rain, the sonorous gusts of the wind, the mult.i.tudinous voices of the muttering leaves.

He said to himself that it was fancy. "All this trouble ez I hev hed along o' Nate Griggs hev mighty nigh addled my brains."

The name recalled his resolve.

"I'll git even with him, though. I'll git even with him yit," he reiterated as he plodded on heavily down the path, his mind once more busy with all the details of his discovery, his misplaced confidence, and the wreck of his hopes.

It seemed so hard that he should never before have heard of "entering land," and of that law of the State according priority to the finder of mineral. The mine was his, but he had hid the discovery from all but Nate, who claimed it himself, and had secured the legal t.i.tle.

"But I'll git even with him," he said resolutely between his set teeth.

He had thought it a lucky chance to remember, in his reverie before the fire-lit hearth, that peg in the shed at the tanyard on which Tim had hung his brother's coat. Somehow the episode of the afternoon had left so vivid an impression on Birt's mind that hours afterward he seemed to see the dull, clouded sky, the sombre, encircling woods, the brown stretch of spent tan, the little gray shed, and within it, hanging upon a peg, the b.u.t.ternut jeans coat, a stiff white paper protruding from its pocket.

That grant, he thought, had taken from him his rights. He would destroy it--he would tear it into bits, and cast it to the turbulent mountain winds. It was not his, to be sure. But was it justly Nate's?--he had no right to enter the land down the ravine.

And so Birt argued with his conscience.

Now wherever Conscience calls a halt, it is no place for Reason to debate the question. The way ahead is no thoroughfare.

Birt did not recognize the tearing of the paper as stealing, but he knew that all this was morally wrong, although he would not admit it. He would not forego his revenge--it was too dear; he was too deeply injured. In the anger that possessed his every faculty, he did not appreciate its futility.

There were other facts which he did NOT know. He was ignorant that the deed which he contemplated was a crime in the estimation of the law, a penitentiary offense.

And toward this terrible pitfall he trudged in the darkness, saying over and again to himself, "I'll git even with Nate Griggs; he'll hev no grant, no land, no gold--no more 'n me. I'll git even with him."

His progress seemed incredibly slow as he groped along the path.

But the rain soon ceased; the wind began to scatter the clouds; through a rift he saw a great, glittering planet blazing high above their dark turmoils.

How the drops pattered down as the wind tossed the laurel!--once they sounded like footfalls close behind him. He turned and looked back into the obscurities of the forest. Nothing--a frog had begun to croak far away, and the vibrations of the katydid were strident on the damp air.

And here was the tanyard, a denser area of gloom marking where the house and shed stood in the darkness. He did not hesitate. He stepped over the bars, which lay as usual on the ground, and walked across the yard to the shed. The eaves were dripping with moisture.

But the coat, still hanging within on the peg, was dry.

He had a thrill of repulsion when he touched it. His hand fell.

"But look how Nate hev treated me," he remonstrated with his conscience.

The next moment he had drawn the grant half-way out of the pocket, and as he moved he almost stepped upon something close behind him.

All at once he knew what it was, even before a flash of the distant lightning revealed a little tow-head down in the darkness, and a pair of black eyes raised to his in perfect confidence.

It was the little sister who had followed him to-night, as she always did when she could.

"Stand back thar, Tennessee!" he faltered.

He was trembling from head to foot. And yet Tennessee was far too young to tell that she had seen the grant in his hands, to understand, even to question. But had he been seized by the whole Griggs tribe, he could not have been so panic-stricken as he was by the sight of that unknowing little head, the touch of the chubby little hand on his knee.

He thrust the grant back into the pocket of Nate's coat. His resolve was routed by the presence of love and innocence. Not here- -not now could he be vindictive, malicious. With some urgent, inborn impulse strongly constraining him, he caught the little sister in his arms, and fled headlong through the darkness, homeward.

As he went he was amazed that he should have contemplated this revenge.

"Why, I can't afford ter be a scoundrel an' sech, jes' 'kase Nate Griggs air a tricky feller an' hev fooled me. Ef Tennessee hedn't stepped up so powerful peart I moughtn't hev come ter my senses in time. I mought hev tore up Nate's grant by now. But arter this I ain't never goin' ter set out ter act like a scamp jes' 'kase somebody else does."

His conscience had prevailed, his better self returned. And when he reached home, and opening the door saw his mother still nodding over her knitting, and Rufe asleep in his chair, and the fire smouldering on the hearth, all as he had left it, he might have thought that he had dreamed the temptation and his rescue, but for his dripping garments and Tennessee in his arms all soaking with the rain.

The noise of his entrance roused his mother, who stared in drowsy astonishment at the bedraggled apparition on the threshold.

"Tennie follered me ter the tanyard 'fore I fund her out," Birt explained. "It 'pears ter hev rained on her, considerable," he added deprecatingly.

Tennie was looking eagerly over her shoulder to note the effect of this statement. Her streaming hair flirted drops of water on the floor; her cheeks were ruddy; her black eyes brightened with apprehension.

"Waal, sir! that thar child beats all. Never mind, Tennie, ye'll meet up with a wild varmint some day when ye air follerin' Birt off from the house, an' I ain't surprised none ef it eats ye! But shucks!" Mrs. Dicey continued impersonally, "I mought ez well save my breath; Tennie ain't feared o' nuthin', ef Birt air by."

The word "varmint" seemed to recall something to Tennessee. She began to chatter unintelligibly about an "owEL," and to chuckle so, that Birt had sudden light upon that mysterious laugh which he had heard behind him at the bars.

In his pride in Tennessee he related how the owl had startled him, and the little girl, invisible in the darkness, had laughed.

"Tennessee ain't pretty, I know, but she air powerful peart," he said, affectionately, as he placed her upon her feet on the floor.

Birt was out early with his axe the next day. The air was delightfully pure after the rain-storm; the sky, gradually becoming visible, wore the ideal azure; the freshened foliage seemed tinted anew. And the morning was pierced by the gilded, glittering javelins of the sunrise, flung from over the misty eastern mountains. As the day dawned all sylvan fascinations were alert in the woods. The fragrant winds were garrulous with wild legends of piney gorges; of tumultuous cascades fringed by thyme and mint and ferns. Every humble weed lent odorous suggestions. The airy things all took to wing. And the spider was a-weaving.

Birt had felled a slender young ash, and was cutting it into lengths for the fireplace, when he noticed a squirrel, sleek woodland dandy, frisking about a rotten log at some little distance, by the roadside.

Suddenly the squirrel paused, then nimbly sped away. There was the sound of approaching hoofs along the road, and presently from around the curve a woman appeared mounted on a sorrel mare, and with a long-legged colt ambling in the rear.

It was Mrs. Griggs, setting out on a journey of some ten miles to visit her married daughter who lived on a neighboring spur. She had taken an early start to "git rid o' the heat o' the noon," as she explained to Mrs. Dicey, who had run out to the rail fence when she reined up beside it. Birt dropped his axe and joined them, expecting to hear more about Nate's grant and the gold mine. Rufe and Tennessee added their company without any definite intention.

Pete and Joe were hurrying out of the house toward the group. All the dogs congregated, some of them climbing over the fence to investigate the colt, which was skittish under the ordeal. Even the turkey-gobbler, strutting on the outskirts of the a.s.semblage, had an attentive aspect, as if he, too, relished the gossip.

Mrs. Griggs's pink calico sunbonnet surmounted the cap with the explanatory ruffle. She carried a fan of turkey feathers, and with appropriate gesticulation, it aided in expounding to Mrs. Dicey the astonishing news that Nate had found a gold mine on vacant land, and had entered the tract. They intended to send specimens to the State a.s.sayer, and they were all getting ready to begin work at once.

Another surprise to Birt! The ignorant mountain boy had never heard of the a.s.sayer. But indeed Nate had only learned of the existence of the office and its uses during that memorable trip to Sparta.

The prideful Mrs. Griggs from her elevation, literal and metaphorical, supplemented all this by the creditable statements that Nate had turned twenty-one, had cast his vote, and had a right to a choice at the Cross-roads.

Then she chirruped to the rawboned sorrel mare, and jogged off down the road, followed by the frisky colt, whose long, slender legs when in motion seemed so fragile that it was startling to witness the temerity with which he kicked up his frolicsome heels. The dogs, with that odd canine affectation of having just perceived the intruders, pursued them with sudden asperity, barking and snapping, and at last came trotting nimbly home, wagging their tails and with a dutiful mien.

Mrs. Dicey went back into the house, and sat for a time in envious meditation, fairly silenced, and with her ap.r.o.n flung over her face.

Then she fell to lamenting that she had been working all her life for nothing, and it would take so little to make the family comfortable, and that her children seemed "disabled somehow in thar heads, an' though always rootin' around in the woods, hed never fund no gold mine nor nuthin' else out o' the common."