V. BACK TO THE HILLS
Winter drew a gray veil over the mountains, wove into it tiny jewels offrost and turned it many times into a mask of snow, before spring brokeagain among them and in Marston's impatient heart. No spring had everbeen like that to him. The coming of young leaves and flowers andbird-song meant but one joy for the hills to him--the Blight was comingback to them. All those weary waiting months he had clung grimly to hiswork. He must have heard from her sometimes, else I think he would havegone to her; but I knew the Blight's pen was reluctant and casual foranybody, and, moreover, she was having a strenuous winter at home. Thathe knew as well, for he took one paper, at least, that he might simplyread her name. He saw accounts of her many social doings as well, andate his heart out as lovers have done for all time gone and will do forall time to come.
I, too, was away all winter, but I got back a month before the Blight,to learn much of interest that had come about. The Hon. Samuel Budd hadear-wagged himself into the legislature, had moved that Court-House, andwas going to be State Senator. The Wild Dog had confined his recklesscareer to his own hills through the winter, but when spring came,migratory-like, he began to take frequent wing to the Gap. So far, heand Marston had never come into personal conflict, though Marston keptever ready for him, and several times they had met in the road, eyedeach other in passing and made no hipward gesture at all. But thenMarston had never met him when the Wild Dog was drunk--and when sober, Itook it that the one act of kindness from the engineer always stayed hishand. But the Police Guard at the Gap saw him quite often--and to it hewas a fearful and elusive nuisance. He seemed to be staying somewherewithin a radius of ten miles, for every night or two he would circleabout the town, yelling and firing his pistol, and when we chased him,escaping through the Gap or up the valley or down in Lee. Many planswere laid to catch him, but all failed, and finally he came in one dayand gave himself up and paid his fines. Afterward I recalled thatthe time of this gracious surrender to law and order was but littlesubsequent to one morning when a woman who brought butter and eggs to mylittle sister casually asked when that "purty slim little gal with thesnappin' black eyes was a-comin' back." And the little sister, pleasedwith the remembrance, had said cordially that she was coming soon.
Thereafter the Wild Dog was in town every day, and he behaved well untilone Saturday he got drunk again, and this time, by a peculiar chance, itwas Marston again who leaped on him, wrenched his pistol away, and puthim in the calaboose. Again he paid his fine, promptly visited a "blindTiger," came back to town, emptied another pistol at Marston on sightand fled for the hills.
The enraged guard chased him for two days and from that day the Wild Dogwas a marked man. The Guard wanted many men, but if they could have hadtheir choice they would have picked out of the world of malefactors thatsame Wild Dog.
Why all this should have thrown the Hon. Samuel Budd into such gloomI could not understand--except that the Wild Dog had been so loyal ahenchman to him in politics, but later I learned a better reason, thatthreatened to cost the Hon. Sam much more than the fines that, as Ilater learned, he had been paying for his mountain friend.
Meanwhile, the Blight was coming from her Northern home through thegreen lowlands of Jersey, the fat pastures of Maryland, and, as thewhite dresses of schoolgirls and the shining faces of darkies thickenedat the stations, she knew that she was getting southward. All the wayshe was known and welcomed, and next morning she awoke with the keen airof the distant mountains in her nostrils and an expectant light in herhappy eyes. At least the light was there when she stepped daintily fromthe dusty train and it leaped a little, I fancied, when Marston, bronzedand flushed, held out his sunburnt hand. Like a convent girl she babbledquestions to the little sister as the dummy puffed along and she bubbledlike wine over the midsummer glory of the hills. And well she might, forthe glory of the mountains, full-leafed, shrouded in evening shadows,blue-veiled in the distance, was unspeakable, and through the Gap thesun was sending his last rays as though he, too, meant to take a peep ather before he started around the world to welcome her next day. And shemust know everything at once. The anniversary of the Great Day on whichall men were pronounced free and equal was only ten days distant andpreparations were going on. There would be a big crowd of mountaineersand there would be sports of all kinds, and games, but the tournamentwas to be the feature of the day.
"A tournament?" "Yes, a tournament," repeated the little sister,and Marston was going to ride and the mean thing would not tell whatmediaeval name he meant to take. And the Hon. Sam Budd--did the Blightremember him? (Indeed, she did)--had a "dark horse," and he had betheavily that his dark horse would win the tournament--whereat the littlesister looked at Marston and at the Blight and smiled disdainfully. Andthe Wild Dog--DID she remember him? I checked the sister here with aglance, for Marston looked uncomfortable and the Blight saw me do it,and on the point of saying something she checked herself, and her face,I thought, paled a little.
That night I learned why--when she came in from the porch after Marstonwas gone. I saw she had wormed enough of the story out of him to worryher, for her face this time was distinctly pale. I would tell her nomore than she knew, however, and then she said she was sure she had seenthe Wild Dog herself that afternoon, sitting on his horse in the bushesnear a station in Wildcat Valley. She was sure that he saw her, and hisface had frightened her. I knew her fright was for Marston and not forherself, so I laughed at her fears. She was mistaken--Wild Dog was anoutlaw now and he would not dare appear at the Gap, and there was nochance that he could harm her or Marston. And yet I was uneasy.
It must have been a happy ten days for those two young people. Everyafternoon Marston would come in from the mines and they would go offhorseback together, over ground that I well knew--for I had been allover it myself--up through the gray-peaked rhododendron-bordered Gapwith the swirling water below them and the gray rock high above whereanother such foolish lover lost his life, climbing to get a flower forhis sweetheart, or down the winding dirt road into Lee, or up throughthe beech woods behind Imboden Hill, or climbing the spur of Morris'sFarm to watch the sunset over the majestic Big Black Mountains, wherethe Wild Dog lived, and back through the fragrant, cool, moonlit woods.He was doing his best, Marston was, and he was having trouble--as everyman should. And that trouble I knew even better than he, for I had onceknown a Southern girl who was so tender of heart that she could refuseno man who really loved her she accepted him and sent him to her father,who did all of her refusing for her. And I knew no man would know thathe had won the Blight until he had her at the altar and the priestlyhand of benediction was above her head.
Of such kind was the Blight. Every night when they came in I could readthe story of the day, always in his face and sometimes in hers; andit was a series of ups and downs that must have wrung the boy's heartbloodless. Still I was in good hope for him, until the crisis cameon the night before the Fourth. The quarrel was as plain as thoughtypewritten on the face of each. Marston would not come in that nightand the Blight went dinnerless to bed and cried herself to sleep. Shetold the little sister that she had seen the Wild Dog again peeringthrough the bushes, and that she was frightened. That was herexplanation--but I guessed a better one.