The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. Mary Noailles Murfree

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СКАЧАТЬ royally purple, richly dark. Wings were in the air, and every instinct was homeward. An eagle, with a shadow skurrying through the valley like some forlorn Icarus that might not soar, swept high over the landscape. Above all rose the great 'bald,' still splendidly illumined with the red glamour of the sunset, and holding its uncovered head so loftily against the sky that it might seem it had bared its brow before the majesty of heaven.

      When the 'men folks,' great, gaunt, bearded, jeans-clad fellows, stood in the shed-room and gazed at the splintered door upon the floor, it was difficult to judge what was the prevailing sentiment, so dawdling, so uncommunicative, so inexpressive of gesture were they.

      'We knowed ez thar war strangers prowlin' roun',' said the master of the house, when he had heard his mother's excited account of the events of the day. 'We war a-startin' home ter dinner, an' seen thar beastises hitched thar a-nigh the trough. An' I 'lowed ez mebbe they mought be the revenue devils, so I jes' made the boys lay low. An' Sol war set ter watch, an' he gin the word when they hed rid away.'

      He was a man of fifty-five, perhaps, tough and stalwart. His face was as lined and seamed as that of his mother, who had counted nearly fourscore years, but his frame was almost as supple as at thirty. This trait of physical vigour was manifested in each of his muscular sons, and, despite their slow and lank uncouthness, their movements suggested latent elasticity. In Dorinda, his only daughter, it graced her youth and perfected her beauty. He was known far and wide as 'Groundhog Cayce,' but he would tell you, with a flash of the eye, that before the war he bore the Christian name of John.

      Nothing more was said on the subject until after supper, when they were all sitting, dusky shadows, on the little porch, where the fireflies sparkled and the vines fluttered, and one might look out and see the new moon, in the similitude of a silver boat, sailing down the western skies, off the headlands of Chilhowee. A cricket was shrilling in the weeds. The vague sighing voice of the woods rose and fell with a melancholy monody. A creamy elder-blossom glimmered in a corner of the rail fence, hard by, its delicate, delicious odour pervading the air.

      'I never knowed,' said one of the young men, 'ez this hyar sher'ff—this 'Cajah Green—war sech a headin' critter.'

      'He never teched the bar'l,' said the old woman, not wishing that he should appear blacker than he had painted himself.

      'I s'pose you-uns gin him an' his gang a bite an' sup,' remarked Groundhog Cayce.

      'They eat a sizable dinner hyar,' put in Mirandy Jane, who, having cooked it, had no mind that it should be belittled.

      'An' they stayed a right smart while, an' talked powerful frien'ly an' sociable-like,' said old Mrs. Cayce, 'till the sher'ff got addled with the notion that we hed Rick Tyler hid hyar. An' unless we-uns hed tied him in the cheer or shot him, nuthin' in natur' could hev held him. I 'lowed 't war the dram he tuk, though D'rindy thinks differ. They never teched the bar'l, though.'

      'An' then,' said Dorinda, with a sudden gush of tears, all the afflicted delicacy of a young and tender woman, all the overweening pride of the mountaineer, throbbing wildly in her veins, her heart afire, her helpless hands trembling, 'he said the word ez he would lock me up in the jail at Shaftesville, sence I hed owned ter seein' a man ez he warn't peart enough ter ketch. He spoke that word ter me—the jail!'

      She hung sobbing in the doorway.

      There was a murmur of indignation among the group, and John Cayce rose to his feet with a furious oath.

      'He shell rue it!' he cried—'he shell rue it! Me an' mine take no word off'n nobody. My gran'dad an' his three brothers, one hunderd an' fourteen year ago, kem hyar from the old North State an' settled in the Big Smoky. They an' thar sons rooted up the wilderness. They cropped. They fit the beastis; they fit the Injun; they fit the British; an' this last little war o' ourn they fit each other. Thar hev never been a coward 'mongst 'em. Thar hev never been a key turned on one of 'em, or a door shet. They hev respected the law fur what it war wuth, an' they hev stood up fur thar rights agin it. They answer fur thar word, an others hev ter answer.'

      He paused for a moment.

      The moon, still in the similitude of a silver boat, swung at anchor in a deep indentation in the summit of Chilhowee that looked like some lonely pine-girt bay; what strange, mysterious fancies did it land from its cargo of sentiments and superstitions and uncanny influences!

      'D'rindy,' her father commanded, 'make a mark on this hyar rifle-bar'l fur 'Cajah Green's word ter be remembered by.'

      There was a flash in the faint moonbeams, as he held out to her a long, sharp knife. The rifle was in his hand. Other marks were on it commemorating past events. This was to be a foregone conclusion.

      'No, no!' cried the girl, shrinking back aghast. 'I don't want him shot. I wouldn't hev him hurted fur me, fur nothin'! I ain't keerin' now fur what he said. Let him be—let him be!'

      She had smarted under the sense of indignity. She had wanted their sympathy, and perhaps their idle anger. She was dismayed by the revengeful passion she had roused.

      'No, no!' she reiterated, as one of the younger men, her brother Peter, stepped swiftly out from the shadow, seized her hand with the knife trembling in it, and, catching the moonlight on the barrel of the rifle, guided upon it, close to the muzzle, the mark of a cross.

      The moon had weighed anchor at last, and dropped down behind the mountain summit, leaving the bay with a melancholy waning suffusion of light, and the night very dark.

II.

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      The summer days climbed slowly over the Great Smoky Mountains. Long the morning lingered among the crags, and chasms, and the dwindling shadows. The vertical noontide poised motionless on the great balds. The evening dawdled along the sunset slopes, and the waning crimson waited in the dusk for the golden moonrise.

      So little speed they made that it seemed to Rick Tyler that weeks multiplied while they loitered.

      It might have been deemed the ideal of a sylvan life—those days while he lay hid out on the Big Smoky. His rifle brought him food with but the glance of the eye and a touch on the trigger: 'Ekal ter the prophet's raven, ef the truth war knowed,' he said sometimes, while he cooked the game over a fire of dead-wood gathered by the wayside. A handful of blackberries gave it a relish, and there were the ice-cold, never-failing springs of the range wherever he might turn.

      But for the unquiet thoughts that followed him from the world, the characteristic sloth of the mountaineer might have spared him all sense of tedium, as he lay on the bank of a mountain stream, while the slow days waxed and waned. Often he would see a musk-rat—picturesque little body—swimming in a muddy dip. And again his listless gaze was riveted upon the quivering diaphanous wings of a snake-doctor, hovering close at hand, until the grotesque, airy thing would flit away. The arrowy sunbeams shot into the dense umbrageous tangles, and fell spent to earth as the shadows swayed. Farther down the stream two huge cliffs rose on either side of the channel, giving a narrow view of far-away blue mountains as through a gate. In and out stole the mist, uncertain whither. The wind came and went, paying no toll. Sometimes, when the sun was low, a shadow—an antlered shadow—slipped through like a fantasy.

      But when the skies would begin to darken and the night come tardily on, the scanty incidents of the day lost their ephemeral interest. His human heart would assert itself, and he would yearn for the life from which he was banished, and writhe СКАЧАТЬ