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Down the Ravine, a novel by Mary Noailles Murfree |
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Chapter 10 |
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_ CHAPTER X Birt, meanwhile, was trudging along in the woods, hardly seeing where he went, hardly caring. He had not had even a vague premonition when the tanner told him that he might have the rest of the day off. He did not now want the holiday which would once have so rejoiced him, and he said as much. And then the tanner, making the disclosure by degrees, being truly sorry to part with the boy, intimated that he need come back no more. Birt unharnessed the mule by the sense of touch and the force of habit, for blinding tears intervened between his vision and the rusty old buckles and worn straps of leather. The animal seemed to understand that something was amiss, and now and then turned his head interrogatively. Somehow Birt was glad to feel that he left at least one friend in the tanyard, albeit the humblest, for he had always treated the beast with kindness, and he was sure the mule would miss him. When he reached home he loitered for a time outside the fence, trying to nerve himself to witness his mother's distress. And at last his tears were dried, and he went in and told her the news. It was hard for him nowadays to understand that simple mother of his. She did nothing that he expected. To be sure her cheek paled, her eyes looked anxious for a moment, and her hands trembled so that she carefully put down upon the table a dish which she had been wiping. But she said quite calmly, "Waal, sonny, I dunno but ye hed better take a day off from work, sure enough, an' go a-huntin'. Thar's yer rifle, an' mebbe ye'll git a shot at a deer down yander by the lick. The chill'n haint hed no wild meat lately, 'ceptin' squir'ls out'n Rufe's trap." And then he began to cry out bitterly that nobody would give him work, and they would all starve; that the tanner believed he had stolen the grant, and was afraid to have him about the hides. "'Tain't no differ ez long ez 'tain't the truth," said his mother philosophically. "We-uns will jes' abide by the truth." He repeated this phrase over and over as he struggled through the tangled underbrush of the dense forest. It was all like some terrible dream; and but for Tennessee, it would be the truth! How he blessed the little sister that her love for him and his love for her had come between him and crime at that moment of temptation. "So powerful peart!" he muttered with glistening eyes, as he thought of her. The grant was gone, to be sure; but he did not take it. They accused him--and falsely! It was something to be free and abroad in the woods. He heard the wind singing in the pines. Their fine, penetrating aroma pervaded the air, and the rusty needles, covering the ground, muffled his tread. Once he paused--was that the bleat of a fawn, away down on the mountain's slope? He heard no more, and he walked on, looking about with his old alert interest. He was refreshed, invigorated, somehow consoled, as he went. O wise mother! he wondered if she foresaw this when she sent him into the woods. He had not before noted how the season was advancing. Here and there, in the midst of the dark green foliage, leaves shone so vividly yellow that it seemed as if upon them some fascinated sunbeam had expended all its glamours. In a dusky recess he saw the crimson sumach flaring. And the distant blue mountains, and the furthest reaches of the azure sky, and the sombre depths of the wooded valley, and the sheeny splendors of the afternoon sun, and every incident of crag or chasm--all appeared through a soft purple haze that possessed the air, and added an ideal embellishment to the scene. Down the ravine the "lick" shone with the lustre of a silver lakelet. He saw the old oak-tree hard by, with the historic scaffold among its thinning leaves, and further along the slope were visible vague bobbing figures, which he recognized as the "Griggs gang," seeking upon the mountain side the gold which he had discovered. Suddenly he heard a light crackling in the brush,--a faint footfall. It reminded him of the deer-path close at hand. He crouched down noiselessly amongst the low growth and lifted his rifle, his eyes fixed on the point where the path disappeared in the bushes, and where he would first catch a glimpse of the approaching animal. He heard the step again. His finger was trembling on the trigger, when down the path leisurely walked an old gentleman attired in black, a hammer in his hand, and a pair of gleaming spectacles poised placidly upon the bridge of an intellectual Roman nose. And this queer game halted in the middle of the deer-path, all unconscious of his deadly danger. It was a wonder that the rifle was not discharged, for the panic- stricken Birt had lost control of his muscles, and his convulsive finger was still quivering on the trigger as he trembled from head to foot. He hardly dared to try to move the gun. For a moment he could not speak. He gazed in open-mouthed amazement at the unsuspecting old gentleman, who was also unaware of the far more formidable open mouth of the rifle. "Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'?" suddenly yelled out Birt, from his hiding-place. The startled old man jumped, with the most abrupt alacrity. In fact, despite his age and the lack of habit, he bounded as acrobatically from the ground as the expected deer could have done. He was, it is true, a learned man; but science has no specific for sudden fright, and he jumped as ignorantly as if he did not know the difficult name of any of the muscles that so alertly exercised themselves on this occasion. Birt rose at last to his feet and looked with a pallid face over the underbrush. "Now, ain't ye lackin' fur head-stuffin'," he faltered, "a-steppin' along a deer-path ez nat'ral ez ef ye war a big fat buck? I kem mighty nigh shootin' ye." The old gentleman recovered his equilibrium, mental and physical, with marvelous rapidity. "Ah, my young friend,"--he motioned to Birt to come nearer,--"I want to speak to you." Birt stared. One might have inferred, from the tone, that the gentleman had expected to meet him here, whereas Birt had just had the best evidence of his senses that the encounter was a great surprise. The boy observed his interlocutor more carefully than he had yet been able to do. He remembered all at once Rufe's queer story of meeting, down the ravine, an eccentric old man whom he was disposed to identify as Satan. As the stranger stood there in the deer-path, he looked precisely as Rufe had described him, even to the baffling glitter of his spectacles, his gray whiskers, and the curiously shaped hammer in his hand. Birt, although bewildered and still tremulous from the shock to his nerves, was not so superstitious as Rufe, and he shouldered his gun, and, pushing out from the tangled underbrush, joined the old man in the path. "I want," said the gentleman, "to hire a boy for a few days--weeks, perhaps." He smiled with two whole rows of teeth that never grew where they stood. Birt wished he could see the expression of the stranger's eyes, indistinguishable behind the spectacles that glimmered in the light. "What do you say to fifty cents a day?" he continued briskly. Birt's heart sank suddenly. He had heard that Satan traded in souls by working on the avarice of the victim. The price suggested seemed a great deal to Birt, for in this region there is little cash in circulation, barter serving all the ordinary purposes of commerce. As he hesitated, the old man eyed him quizzically. "Afraid of work, eh?" "Naw, sir!" said Birt, sturdily. Ah, if the bark-mill, and the old mule, and the tan-pit, and the wood-pile, and the cornfield might testify! "Fifty cents a day--eh?" said the stranger. At the repetition of the sum, it occurred to Birt, growing more familiar with the eccentricity of his companion, that he ought not in sheer silliness to throw away a chance for employment. "Kin I ask my mother?" he said dubiously. "By all means ask your mother," replied the stranger heartily. Birt's last fantastic doubt vanished. Oh no! this was not Satan in disguise. When did the enemy ever counsel a boy to ask his mother! Birt still stared gravely at him. All the details of his garb, manner, speech, even the hammer in his hand, were foreign to the boy's experience. Presently he ventured a question. "Do you-uns hail from hyar- abouts?" The stranger was frank and communicative. He told Birt that he was a professor of Natural Science in a college in one of the "valley towns," and that he was sojourning, for his health's sake, at a little watering-place some twelve miles distant on the bench of the mountain. Occasionally he made an excursion into the range, which was peculiarly interesting geologically. "But what I wish you to do is to dig for--bones." "BONES?" faltered Birt. "Bones," reiterated the professor solemnly. DID his spectacles twinkle? Birt stood silent, vaguely wondering what his mother would think of "bones." Presently the professor, seeing that the boy was not likely to ask amusing questions, explained. He informed Birt that in the neighborhood of salt licks--"saline quagmires" he called them--were often found the remains of animals of an extinct species, which are of great value to science. He gave Birt the extremely long name of these animals, and descanted upon such conditions of their existence as is known, much of which Birt did not understand. Although this fact was very apparent, it did not in the least affect the professor's ardor in the theme. He was in the habit of talking of these things to boys who did not understand, and alack! to boys who did not want to understand. One point, however, he made very clear. With the hope of some such "find," he was anxious to investigate this particular lick,--about which indeed he had heard a vague tradition of a "big bone" discovery, such as is common to similar localities in this region,-- and for this purpose he proposed to furnish the science and the fifty cents per diem, and earnestly desired that some one else should furnish the muscle. He was accustomed to think much more rapidly than the men with whom Birt was associated, and his briskness in arranging the matter had an incongruous suggestion of the giddiness of youth. He said that he would go home with Birt to fetch the spade, and while there he could settle the terms with the boy's mother, and then they could get to work. He started off at a dapper gait up the deer-path, while Birt, with his rifle on his shoulder, followed. A sudden thought struck Birt. He stopped short. "Now _I_ dunno which side o' that thar lick Nate Griggs's line runs on," he remarked. "Never mind," said the professor, waving away objections with airy efficiency; "I shall first secure the consent of the owner of the land." Birt cogitated for a moment. "Nate Griggs ain't goin' ter gin his cornsent ter nobody ter dig ennywhar down the ravine, ef it air inside o' his lines," he said confidently, "'kase I--'kase he-- leastwise, 'kase gold hev been fund hyar lately, an' he hev entered the land." The professor stopped short in the path. "Gold!" he ejaculated. "Gold!" Was there a vibration of incredulity in his voice? Birt remembered all at once the specimens which he had picked up that memorable evening, down the ravine, when he shot the red fox. Here they still were in his pocket. They showed lustrous, metallic, yellow gleams as he placed them carefully in the old man's outstretched hand, telling how he came by them, of his mistaken confidence, the betrayed trust, and ending by pointing at the group of gold-seekers, microscopic in the distance on the opposite slope. "I hev hearn tell," he added, "ez Nate air countin' on goin' pardners with a man in Sparty, who hev got money, to work the gold mine." Now and then, as he talked, he glanced up at his companion's face, vaguely expecting to discover his opinion by its expression, but the light still played in a baffling glitter upon his spectacles. Birt could only follow when the professor suddenly handed back the specimens with a peremptory "Come--come! We must go for the spade. But when we reach your mother's house I will test this mineral, and you shall see for yourself what you have lost." Mrs. Dicey's first impression upon meeting the stranger and learning of his mission was not altogether surprise as Birt had expected. Her chief absorption was a deep thankfulness that the floors all preserved their freshly scoured appearance. "Fur ef Rufe hed been playin' round hyar ter-day, same ez common, the rubbish would have been a scandal ter the kentry," she reflected. In fact, all was so neat, albeit so poor, that the stranger felt as polite as he looked, while he talked to her about employing Birt in his researches. Birt, however, had little disposition to listen to this. He was excited by the prospect of testing the mineral, and he busied himself with great alacrity in preparing for it under the professor's directions. He suffered a qualm, it is true, as he pounded the shining fragments into a coarse powder, and then he drew out with the shovel a great glowing mass of live coals on the hearth. The dogs peered eagerly in at the door, having followed the stranger with the liveliest curiosity. Towse, bolder than the rest, entered intrepidly with a nonchalant air and a wagging tail, for he and Rufe, having failed to find Birt, had just returned home. The small boy paused on the threshold in amazed recognition of the old gentleman who had occasioned him such a fright that day down the ravine. The professor gesticulated a great deal as he bent over the fire and gave Birt directions, and, with his waving hands and the glow on his hoary hair and beard, he looked like some fantastic sorcerer. Somehow Rufe was glad to see the familiar countenances of Pete and Joe, and was still more reassured to note that his mother was quietly standing beside the table, as she stirred the batter for bread in a wooden bowl. Tennessee had pressed close to Birt, her chubby hand clutching his collar as he knelt on the hearth. He held above the glowing coals a long fire shovel, on which the pulverized mineral had been placed, and his eyes were very bright as he earnestly watched it. "If it is gold," said the old man, "a moderate heat will not affect it." The shovel was growing hot. The live coals glowed beneath it. The breath of the fire stirred Tennessee's flaxen hair. And Birt's dilated eyes saw the yellow particles still glistening unchanged in the centre of the shovel, which was beginning to redden. _ |
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