The Red Debt Part 25

After calling several times, two men appeared in response, at the side gate, back of the store.

"c.u.m on over, Stump--I keetched this fuzzy little Lutts runt a stealin'

my hoss--hain't thet th' all-firedest beatenst nerve ye ever heerd tell on--c.u.m git thes hoss while I ring thes little cuss's neck."

Sap's left hand clutching Buddy's shoulder, also retained the pistol which enc.u.mbered his grip, and as the two men advanced, Buddy threw all his strength into a sudden twist, breaking loose, and fled down the road toward the river with all the might that was in his skinny legs.

In his flight he stooped, and straightened, and ran azigzag; performing every trick known to him calculated to dodge a bullet. Buddy did artfully dodge two b.a.l.l.s which Sap sent after him, but the third bullet tripped between his arm and his body, burning a furrow on both sides, and the fourth pinched a piece out of his shoulder. But these sensations only lent wings to Buddy's feet, and handicapped as he was, with his rifle double hitched over his shoulders, he fairly sailed.

When he reached the black shadows of the line of trees that reached out toward the river, he ventured a look over his shoulder. Sap had stopped, but the other two men were in hot pursuit. Buddy could not possibly travel any faster than he was going then, but his pace soon distanced his pursuers. When the boy observed that they were losing ground, he darted across a vacant plot between the shacks and continued on, stumbling now along the darkened, unfamiliar paths back of the houses, leading toward the river. Finally he paused and stood panting and listening. Amid these shades it was too dark for him to see more than fifty feet distant. He could hear nothing but the barking of hounds and the beating of his own heart. The men who had started out after him had evidently given up the chase. But wis.h.i.+ng to place a safe distance between himself and these prowling enemies, the boy ran onward, and did not stop until he was a quarter of a mile past the last house.

CHAPTER XXI

"DRAW--NOW--COWARD!"

Here he slackened to a walk and, turning over, crossed into the road. He felt of his shoulder gingerly. It did not appear to be bleeding much, but the wound under his arm stung and burned and he could feel the warm blood trickling down his side, and along his arm, also.

As he stood in the road extricating himself from the unusual manner in which he had harnessed his rifle to his shoulders, he was startled by the rapid hoofbeats of an approaching horse. Believing that the McGills were coming after him again, Buddy ran across the road, then hurried toward the river under cover of the wayside brush. He came suddenly upon a broken-down shack, and as the sounds of the galloping hoofs grew more distinct, Buddy dropped to his knees and crawled through a rent in the dilapidated fence and lay down in the weeds with his face toward the road, and waited for a few seconds.

Then he thrust his head between the broken pickets and looked up the road. A horse was coming onward at a fearful, breakneck pace, and behind him followed three or four other hors.e.m.e.n. In the moonlight, Buddy could plainly see the white cloths around the foremost rider's head. It was Sap McGill on the dun horse. Judging from the terrific rate at which the lead horse was leaping over the road, Buddy felt sure that they would pa.s.s him by. The boy drew his head in and waited, breathlessly. Then Sap McGill dashed past, and just as he did so two shots rang out, and McGill tumbled out of the saddle and sprawled in the middle of the road, where he lay still, while his horse continued on.

At this unexpected turn, a great light broke in upon Buddy, and his heart went apatter with joy. He knew now that the men following McGill were his own people. He scurried through the aperture in the fence, but the men had wheeled about and were galloping back as swiftly as they had come.

Buddy hallooed at the top of his lungs, but the noise of their horses'

feet drowned his voice and they raced on and away. As Buddy reached back through the fence and pulled his rifle to him, preparatory to running after the men, he was arrested by the sound of a human voice. He stood puzzled and mystified. He could see nothing, but the voice was uncannily near; seemingly at his very feet.

Buddy cast an awesome look toward the battered, deserted shack with its yawning, sinister windows, and a grave suspicion stole upon him, and mounted to a fear that embraced his soul, and set his knees atremble.

The house was haunted!

Buddy shrank away from the fence, moved by a fear that nothing else could inspire, and which has no kindred terror, but he only made two steps. The same voice held him rooted to the spot. This time there was a timbre in the inarticulate utterance that was strangely familiar to Buddy. Then the mysterious voice formed words that were clearly intelligible: "Now draw--draw now--coward--take yore pick--hear me?--draw----"

Buddy knew that voice too well to question it further. He hurried around the corner of the fence, and out under the chestnut tree, where he stopped short for the s.p.a.ce of a moment, spellbound and dismayed, mutely gazing at the two prostrate forms stretched eerily before him in the gleam of the moon. The next instant Buddy was on his knees beside Hatfield.

"Johnse--Johnse--air yo' kilt--air yo' hurted bad----?"

"Air thet yo'--little Cap?" inquired Johnse feebly.

"Sho'--I bin a huntin' yo'--air yo' hit bad, Johnse?"

"I'm scratched up some, boy; twixt us two, I don't feel as skeetish as I ded 'bout sun-down. Say, Buddy, th' coward won't draw--I knowed he wouldn't--I jest knowed he'd throw in some ornery trick. Say, Buddy, give me yore rifle-gun down heah--an' fix th' muzzle in his ear fo'

me--I lost my Colts--hurry long--han' yore gun down, Buddy----"

The boy had been making a hasty examination of the familiar form that lay inert beside Hatfield. He now leaned over Johnse again.

"Orlick's daid," announced the boy.

"Oh, air he?" said Johnse. "I 'low I'll scuse em then fo' not drawin'--I knowed I hit em hard--but I didn't think he 'lowed to die--th' way he jest naturally hung on--he air so karnsarned tricky. Say, Buddy--how is. .h.i.t a goin'--air th' fellers at em yit?"

"Sho'--we'uns licked 'em bully, Johnse--they's jest a playin' tag now up in town--Sap plugged me twict up by ole Hank's store, as I c.u.m by--Johnse, I got t' rack out now an' git th' men to tote yo' to th'

wagons--I reckon th' doc-man kin peert yo' up a pinch--does yo' hurt bad, Johnse?"

"Ded Sap plug yo', Buddy?"

"Yep--hit don't hurt powerful bad though--an' our men jest plugged Sap, jest now--didn't yo'-all heer th' shoots?"

"I mought hev, Buddy,--but I wus powerful busy arguing with Orlick--yo'

sho' they got Sap?"

"Sho," rea.s.sured Buddy. "He air a layin' up on th' road yonder now--I got t' rack out an' git yo' away from heah now."

"An' I got ole Hank--Gawd'll Moughty!--hain't we'uns in luck?"

Hatfield's voice sunk now to a thin, lingering whisper.

"Buddy," he muttered wearily, "'fore yo' go--kin yo' fetch me a speck o'

water--jest a mouthful o' water somehow----"

The boy hurried behind the old shack in quest of something that would hold water. He found an old tomato can, but there was a rent in its bottom. Presently, he caught sight of a rusty tin bucket hanging by a wire, against a rotting porch post. He dumped the earth and dried roots out of this and held the bucket up to the moon. Then he ran toward the river. When he returned a few minutes later with the water, he was trailing Hatfield's piebald mare after him. The wounded man gulped the water greedily and Buddy unknotted the handkerchief about his neck and bathed his head.

"I air goin' now, Johnse," said Buddy. "Yo' jest lay easy like, an' I'll be back with somebuddy 'fore a goat kin wig his tail."

Whereupon, Buddy mounted the mare and galloped toward the courthouse, unafraid. In less than half an hour, Buddy galloped back, accompanied by six hors.e.m.e.n. They lifted the maimed, unconscious Hatfield and bore him away. As the cortege moved slowly up the moonlit road bearing their wounded leader, little Buddy turned the mare back, and cantered down toward the river to the spot where he had seen Sap McGill tumble out of the saddle when the Lutts' had fired upon him. But the boy was acutely disappointed. McGill was gone. And three bony, starved dogs with ravenous, wolfish eyes that gleamed in the moonlight, wore licking at a pool of blood in the road.

The immeasurable canopy above the hills was clear and pearly, save a narrow reef of low clouds that anch.o.r.ed over the serried peaks of Southpaw. Clouds frowning against the sun, grim and somber and splotched with a sable film that seemingly reflected a stratum of despair and gloom that tides of time could not erase.

Down upon the Moon mountain range, the sun smiled with an affiliating mellowness that found grateful response in the hearts of the denizens, despite the fact that the coves were scarred with new-made mounds, and their cabins were not without the wounded.

And dividing these two mighty ranges of victory and defeat, the frenzied waters of h.e.l.lsfork dinned a neutral warning, reiterating an idiom that boomed like the omen of a tom-tom.

For the past three weeks the Lutts' cabin had been utilized as an improvised hospital. Three of the men who had lingered there had departed to their respective homes, leaving Johnse Hatfield propped up in the "four-poster" alone.

Buddy Lutts' hurts, while painful and stubborn, were flesh wounds, and the boy had spurned the bed. Slab, the negro, was a willing and deft helper. And Buddy attended Johnse with the devotion born of idolization.

In Buddy's boyish appreciation Johnse Hatfield was now a hero, seconded only by his dead father's memory. One bullet had gone entirely through Hatfield, leaving six lodged therein. The surgeon from Hazard had extracted every other one, leaving three inside of Johnse. The doctor did not advance any prophecies direct, because he was not interrogated, but he told the "Ridin' parson" who had been up to the Lutts' house, that in two weeks more Johnse would be up and out, a little heavier, but sound as a grind-stone.

Just at dawn each day, Johnse would open his eyes, yawn and vent an observation he had repeated regularly for three weeks:

"Well--I 'low I'll go up t' th' still long 'bout noontime, Buddy--air yo' a goin' long?--little Cap?"

Whereupon, Buddy would bring in the breakfast which old Slab had ready for him. Then Buddy would go to the "what-not" and get the treasured newspaper, and without protest, Johnse would read it all over to the boy, just as he had done each day since the paper had arrived. Logan, the audacious lawyer from the Blue-Gra.s.s, who had bearded the McGill faction in their own courthouse, had, thoughtfully, sent Johnse Hatfield a Frankfort newspaper, as a significant token of some sort of respect.

The front side of this daily bore a picture, gotten up from description, of Johnse Hatfield. And under this spurious representation were three full-length columns presenting a graphic description of the "Bloodiest Clash in the History of Feudal Warfare," followed by details of the "Graveyard Ma.s.sacre" by an eye-witness.

According to these reporters, out of some eighty-eight men, who dashed down the road on that fateful night to slaughter the Lutts clan, forty-two of them never got away alive from the graveyard facade.

To Buddy Lutts' keen appreciation, the only flaw in this wholesome narrative was the printed rumor that Sap McGill had escaped and was slowly recuperating over in Southpaw.