The Roof Tree Part 38

"I hain't askin' ye whether ye've rid with 'em heretofore or not, Pete,"

the other man significantly reminded him. "I'm only askin' ye ter give me yore hand ye won't nuver do hit ergin. We're goin' ter bust up thet crowd an' penitenshery them thet leads 'em. I hate ter hev ye mixed up, when thet comes ter pa.s.s. Will ye give me yore hand?"

Readily the young member of the secret brotherhood pledged himself, and Parish, ignorant of how deeply he had become involved in the service of Bas Rowlett, thought of him only as young and easily led, and hoped that an ugly complication had been averted.

When Joe Bratton, the Kentucky sheriff, came to the house in the bend of the river to take his prisoner to the Virginia line, he announced himself and then, with a rude consideration, drew off.

"I'll ride ter ther elbow of ther road an' wait fer ye, Parish," he said, awkwardly. "I reckon ye wants ter bid yore wife farewell afore ye starts out."

Already those two had said such things as it is possible to say. They had maintained a brave pretence of taking brief leave of each other; as for a separation looking to a speedy and certain reuniting. They had stressed the argument that, when this time of ordeal had been relegated to the past, no cloud of fear would remain to darken their skies as they looked eastward and remembered that behind those misty ranges lay Virginia.

They had sought to beguile themselves--each for the sake of the other--with all the tricks and chimeras of optimism, but that was only the masquerade of the clown who laughs while his heart is sick and under whose toy-bright paint is the gray pallor of despair.

That court and that jury over there would follow no doubtful course. Its verdict of guilty might as well have been signed in advance, and, while the girl smiled at her husband, it seemed to her that she could hear the voice of the condemning judge, inquiring whether the accused had "aught to say why sentence should not now be p.r.o.nounced" upon him.

For, barring some miracle of fate, the end of that journey lay, and in their hearts they knew it with a sickness of certainty, at the steps of the gallows. The formalities that intervened were little more than the mummeries of an empty formula with which certain men cloaked the spirit of a mob violence they were strong enough to wreak.

Parish Thornton halted at the stile, and his eyes went back lingeringly to the weathered front of the house and to the great tree that made a wide and venerable roof above the other roof. The woman knew that her husband was printing a beloved image on his heart which he might recall and hold before him when he could never again look upon it. She knew that in that farewell gaze and in the later, more loving one which he turned upon her own face, he was storing up the vision he wanted to keep with him even when the hangman's cap had shut out every other earthly picture--when he stood during the seconds that must for him be ages, waiting.

Then the hills reeled and spun before Dorothy Thornton's eyes as giddily as did the fallen leaves which the morning air caught up in little whirlwinds. Their counterfeit of cheer and fact.i.tious courage stood nakedly exposed to both of them, and the man's smile faded as though it were too flippant for such a moment.

Dorothy caught his hand suddenly in hers and led him back into the yard where the roots of the tree spread like star points which had their ends under the soil and deep in the rock of which those mountains were built.

"Kneel down, Cal," she whispered, chokingly, and when they had dropped side by side to postures of prayer, her voice came back to her.

"Lord G.o.d of Heaven an' y'arth," trembled the words on her bloodless lips, "he hain't goin' so fur away but what Yore power still goes with him ... keep him safe. Good Lord ... an' send him back ter me ergin ...

watch over him thar amongst his enemies ... Amen."

They rose after their prayer, and stood for a little while with their hearts beating close in a final embrace, then Dorothy took out of her ap.r.o.n pocket a small object and handed it to him.

"I nigh fergot ter give hit ter ye," she said, "mebby hit'll prove a lucky piece over thar, Cal."

It was the small basket which he had carved with such neat and cunning workmans.h.i.+p from the hard sh.e.l.l of a black walnut ... a trinket for a countryman's watch chain--and intrinsically worthless.

"Hit's almost like takin' ther old tree along with ye," she faltered with a forced note of cheer, "an' ther old tree hain't nuver failed us yit."

Joe Bratton and his prisoner rode with little speech between them until they came to those creek bottom roads that crossed at Jake Crabbott's store, and there they found awaiting them, like a squad of cavalry, some eight or ten men who sat with rifles across the bows of their saddles.

Aaron Capper and Hump Doane were there in the van, and they rode as an escort of friends.

When their long journey over ridge and forest, through gorge and defile, came to its end at the border, the waiting deputation from Virginia recognized what it was intended to recognize. East of the state line this man might travel under strict surveillance, but thus far he had come with a guard of honour--and that guard could, and would, come further if the need arose.

CHAPTER XXVII

Parish Thornton had used all his persuasion to prevent Dorothy's going with him to Virginia. He had argued that the solace of feeling her presence in the courtroom would hardly compensate for the unnerving effect of knowing that the batteries of the prosecution were raining direct fire on her as well as on himself.

Twice, while he had waited the summons that must call him to face his ordeal, the attorney who was to defend him had come over into Kentucky for conference, and it was to the professional advice of this lawyer, almost clairvoyant in his understanding of jury-box psychology, that Dorothy had at last yielded.

"We'll want to have you there later on," he had told the wife. "Juries are presumed to be all logic; in fact, they are two-thirds emotion--and if you appear for the first time in that courtroom at precisely the right moment with your youth and wholesomeness and loyalty, your arrival will do more for your husband than anything short of an alibi. I'll send for you in due season--but until I do, I don't want you seen there."

So Dorothy had stayed anxiously at home.

One crisp and frosty morning she went over to Jake Crabbott's store where she found the usual congregation of loungers, and among them was Bas Rowlett leaning idly on the counter.

Dorothy made her few purchases and started home, but as she left the store the man upon whom she had declared irreconcilable war strolled out and fell into step at her side. She had not dared to rebuff him before those witnesses who still accounted them friends, but she had no relish for his companions.h.i.+p and when they had turned the bend of the road she halted and faced the fellow with determined eyes.

About them the hills were taking on the slate grays and chocolate tones of late autumn and the woods were almost denuded of the flaunting gorgeousness which had so recently held carnival there, yet the sodden drabness of winter had in nowise settled to its monotony, for through the grays and browns ran violet and ultramarine reflexes like soft and creeping fires that burned blue, and those few tenacious leaves that clung valiantly to their stems were as rich of tone as the cherry-dark hues that come out on well-coloured meerschaum.

"I didn't give ye leave ter walk along with me, Bas," announced the girl with a spirited flash in her eyes, and her chin tilted high. "I've got a rather es ter ther company I keeps."

The man looked at her for a hesitant interval without answering, and in his dark face was a mingling of resentment, defiance, and that driving desire that he thought was love.

"Don't ye dast ter trust yoreself with me, Dorothy?" he demanded with a smile that was half pleading and half taunt, and he saw the delicate colour creep into her cheeks and make them vivid.

"I hain't afeared of ye," she quickly disavowed. "Ever sence thet other time when ye sought ter insult me, I've done wore my waist bloused--a-purpose ter tote a dirk-knife. I've got hit right now," and her hand went toward her bosom as she took a backward step into the brittle weed-stalks that grew by the roadside.

But Bas shook his head, and hastened to expound his subtler meaning.

"I didn't mean ye war skeered of no bodily vi'lence, Dorothy. I means ye don't das't trust yoreself with me because ye're affrighted lest ye comes ter love me more'n ye does ther man ye married in sich unthoughted haste. I don't blame ye fer bein' heedful."

"Love ye!" she exclaimed, as the colour deepened in her cheeks and neck, then went sweeping out again in the white and still pa.s.sion of outraged indignation. "I hain't got no feelin' fer ye save only ter despise ye beyond all measure. A woman kain't love no craven an' liar thet does his fightin' by deceit."

Bas Rowlett looked off to the east and when he spoke it was with no reference to the insults that cut most deeply and sorely into mountain sensibilities.

"A woman don't always know what she loves ner hates--all at onc't.

Betwixt them two things thar hain't no sich great differ noways. I'd ruther hev ye hate me then not ter give me no thought one way ner t'other.... Ye're liable ter wake up some day an' diskiver thet ye've jest been gittin' ther names of yore feelin's mixed up." He paused in his exposition upon human nature long enough to smile indulgently, then continued: "So long es ye won't abide ter let me even talk te yer, I knows ye're afear'd of me in yore heart--an' thet's because ye're afeared of what yore heart hitself mout come ter feel."

"Thet's a right elevatin' s'armon ye preaches," she made scornful answer, "but a body doesn't gentle a mad dog jest ter show they hain't skeered of hit."

"Es fer Parish Thornton," he went on as though his musings were by way of soliloquy, "ye kain't handily foller him whar he's goin' ter, nohow.

He's done run his course already."

A hurricane gust of dizzy wrath swept the woman and her voice came explosively: "Thet's a lie, Bas Rowlett! Hit'll be _you_ thet dies with a rope on yore neck afore ye gits through--not him!"

"Ef I does," declared the man with equanimity, "hit won't be jest yit. I grants him full an' free right of way ter go ahead of me."

But abruptly that cool and disconcerting vein of ironic calm left him and he bent his head with the sullen and smouldering eyes of a vicious bull.

"But be thet es. .h.i.t may. I claims thet ye kain't stand out erginst my sweetheartin' ef ye trusts yoreself ter see me. _You_ claims contrariwise, but ye don't dast test yore theory. I loves ye an' wants ye enough ter go on eatin' insults fer a spell.... Mebby ther Widder Thornton'll listen ter reason--when ther jury an' ther hangman gits done."

The girl made no answer. She could not speak because of the fury that choked her, but she turned on her heel and he made no effort to follow her.

The steeply humped mountains on either side seemed to Dorothy Thornton to close in and stifle her, and the bracing, effervescent air of the high places had become dead and lifeless in her nostrils, as to one who smothers.

That evening, when Sim Squires came in to supper, he made casual announcement that he understood Bas had gone away somewhere. His vapid grin turned to a sneer as he mentioned Rowlett's name after the never-failing habit of his dissembling, but Dorothy set down his plate as though it had become suddenly too hot to hold.