The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Red Debt, by Everett MacDonald, Illustrated by William Oberhardt This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Red Debt Echoes from Kentucky Author: Everett MacDonald Release Date: May 6, 2011 [eBook #36047] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED DEBT*** E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library (http://kdl.kyvl.org/) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Kentuckiana Digital Library. See http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;view=toc;idno=b92-232-31280811 THE RED DEBT ECHOES FROM KENTUCKY By Everett MacDonald ILLUSTRATIONS FROM ORIGINAL DRAWINGS OF WILLIAM OBERHARDT G. W. DILLINGHAM CO. NEW YORK The Red Debt COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PUBLISHED APRIL, 1916 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA LINOTYPE COMPOSITION, ELECTROTYPES, PRESSWORK AND BINDING BY The J. J. Little & Ives Company 425-435 East 24th Street New York City N. Y. WITH UNUTTERABLE LOVE I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME TO My Mother THE AUTHOR "... use me as best you can for a grandfather?" CONTENTS CHAPTER I. A Mighty Man CHAPTER II. Belle-Ann Benson CHAPTER III. The Traitor CHAPTER IV. An Ultimatum CHAPTER V. Orlick's money Spurned CHAPTER VI. Upon the Altar CHAPTER VII. Dedicated with his Blood CHAPTER VIII. "Lessen he kills the Revenuer" CHAPTER IX. Orlick works Evil CHAPTER X. In Prison CHAPTER XI. A Friend in Need CHAPTER XII. The Stigma CHAPTER XIII. Rubric Drops CHAPTER XIV. "The onlyest Lutts" CHAPTER XV. Buddy forces an Issue CHAPTER XVI. The Murder Partners CHAPTER XVII. Circuit Court CHAPTER XVIII. The Graveyard Massacre CHAPTER XIX. Hatfield overtakes the Traitor CHAPTER XX. In the Hands of the Enemy CHAPTER XXI. "Draw—now—Coward!" CHAPTER XXII. The Mission School CHAPTER XXIII. Belle-Ann visits Lexington CHAPTER XXIV. The Guest of a Grandee CHAPTER XXV. Know Ye the Truth CHAPTER XXVI. Belle-Ann has a Vision CHAPTER XXVII. A Grandfather CHAPTER XXVIII. A Confession CHAPTER XXIX. The Red Debt CHAPTER XXX. The Shooting of Peter Burton CHAPTER XXXI. In which Slab prophesies CHAPTER XXXII. The Near Assassin CHAPTER XXXIII. Belle-Ann comes back CHAPTER XXXIV. The Reunion CHAPTER XXXV. The Downfall of Sap McGill CHAPTER XXXVI. Belle-Ann's Recanted Creed CHAPTER XXXVII. The Ghost-Man CHAPTER XXXVIII. The Haunted Church CHAPTER XXXIX. The Flight CHAPTER XL. His Rock of Ages CHAPTER XLI. In which Providence takes a Hand BY THE SAME AUTHOR LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "... use me as best you can for a grandfather?" "Yo' know where they be" "He kilt my maw—he ded—an' he kilt my pap" "Who air th' head o' th' people—who air Cap'in heah in Moon?" "Hit air God's buryin' now" THE RED DEBT CHAPTER I A MIGHTY MAN No imagery can adequately picture the profound grandeur and wide wild beauty of these Kentucky highlands. At the age when its purity was whitest, a great moon hung midway between Southpaw peak and Moon mountain. Its divine splendor, unalloyed with any tithe of partisanship, laved with a mystic luster these two primeval ranges that had scowled impenitently at each other, behind their mask of flowers and tinseled verdure, across the lethal gulch separating them, for fifty blood-touched, feudal years. This wondrous effulgence purged every exposed crevice, naked rock and open cove with its chastity. On the ground underneath the patch-quilt of virgin petals and emerald leafage, it peopled a theatre of animated pictures. And the coppice pooled the shadows, creating a hippodrome of transitory caricatures, fanciful, grotesque and fearful. Each sullen moss-hooded boulder flung its distorted, exaggerated image down and fixed a creeping mummy hard by. Still another white beacon leaned over the hills where, like a stellar flambeau, the lead-star trembled and sputtered, kindled just on the apex of Henhawk's knob. The chasm that furrowed between and, topographically, held these two warring communities apart, sunk its rock-lined bed sheer two hundred feet below. Through this sinuous adamantine artery the head waters of Hellsfork dashed in rampant flight, beating themselves into a madness against a troup of gigantic, orange-tinctured boulders polished glassy by the torrents Nature had unloosed at the beginning of time. The onrushing wavelets leaped like furious creatures at these menacing things which evermore preyed upon their foaming, impotent wrath; shaping crystal goblets that bubbled over and burst, and flung showers of magical frothy flowers aloft. From across the silvery expanse of spectral mist that overhung the mountains, near and afar, a hundred voices of the wilderness night were calling. That this barnacle of blood-lust should leech itself upon the fair face of a modern civilization; that in this nineteen hundred and twelve epoch of obeisant civism, hedged about with emollient Christian culture—such a vast stratum of malignant strife should coil here, hidden amidst a congress of Nature's sublime artistry, is an irony at once awesome and hopelessly insoluble. Nevertheless, immured upon natural ramifications on the shoulder of Moon mountain, old Cap Lutts, a strategist and mountain despot of kingly renown, dominated as the head of an implacable dynasty that boded ill to inimical invaders; be it agents of the government or spies of the shaggy Southpaw clan where Sap McGill, who had stepped into his father's war shoes at the end of their last fatal encounter with Cap Lutts, now marshalled his horde of bush-whackers, bent upon the speedy annihilation of the Lutts folk, kith and kin. Supported on a platform-like plot projecting from the hip of Moon mountain, the domicile of old Lutts stood out in the moonlight, traced in silver brocade against a somber ribbon of scrub timber that girded the waist of the mountain. From the Lutts abode the eye traveled for miles along the gorge to the right. To the left the chasm cut deeper into the hills, until it ended in the valley where Boon Creek and Hellsfork intersected; where the paw-paws and the ferns, the weeping willows and the familiar, unnamed flowers were luxuriant. Straight ahead, traversing the dry bed of a blind gulch, a train of pigmy peaks, left dun and naked by a river dead a thousand years, rose up and bared their serried spurs like hound's teeth. On the opposite side of Hellsfork, lifted the stupendous Southpaw range—the stronghold of the enemy—rearing its savage peaks higher and higher, piling upward and onward until they pierced the myriad stars; then tumbled downward into the russet realms of lilac mist. Beyond the Lutts cabin and towering above it, a single monster boulder jutted outward from the perpendicular wall of granite and hung perilously over sheer space. This freakish rock, known as Eagle Crown, looked like a ragged punctuation pause in a folk-lore story; a relic tossed on high by some legendary, boastful giant. The wonder was how Cap Lutts gained its forbidding lofty platform, for surely there was no visible means of ascent. Howbeit, Eagle Crown had been the old man's retreat for sixty-odd years. This imperishable shelf of granite offered him sanctuary when travail and sorrow, that weighted his life, pressed hard upon him. There he had spent his moody hours since boyhood. There his father and his great-grandfather had gone to be alone. And there to-night, high up and alone, his majestic form was silhouetted plainly against the sky. A mighty man, this Lutts. At seventy-six he stood six feet seven inches—straight as an arrow; a seasoned ball-bearing pyramid of big bones, mounted with iron-fibered muscles; and a drop of chilled steel for a fighting heart. In the premises of peace, this same heart swelled up to proportions of compassion and generosity that named him father of all the community north of Hellsfork—a man who never failed his people; one to whom they hurried with their woes when they needed material help, succor, sympathy and protection. From this height, the old man fondly turned his eyes downward toward the clearing that now held his sacred treasure— a log church. There, high up toward heaven, in the profundity of his loneness, only God knew this somber, silent man's thoughts—this feud-hunted, law-hounded man whose soul brimmed with his own religion; whose being was wrapped about with that which he took for the right; whose heart spurned all that he thought wrong. His so-called bandit-spirit was insulated with the convictions of his own peculiar faith. His every utterance and deed were tempered with the tenets of a unique creed handed down by his mountain fore-fathers. In his heart there murmured a runic cadence, the language of which was only interpreted by the omnipotent, all-merciful Over-soul. Why the menacing hand of an outer world was lifted against him was a problem he had long since despaired of solving. Fondly now he gazed down toward the spot where the new cedar clapboards of the meeting-house shimmered like a disk of true gold beneath the moon's whiteness; beckoning to him with an insistence that stirred his stoic heart to its depths. A tender look softened the old man's opaque mask-like features, as fumbling in his shirt-pocket and bringing forth a worn tintype picture of a woman, swathed in buckskin, he held it to the moon's rays and for a full minute peered tenderly at the kindly pictured eyes and smiling lips. Then, clasping the tintype reverently between his two mighty hands, he leaned against the natural buttress at his back, and his great head, crowned with its hoary white mane, was bowed down. "To-morry—to-morry," he whispered, and he knew that the picture smiled forgivingly and happily back to him. With the proceeds of moonshine whiskey, backed by the brawn of heredity and a righteous purpose, old Cap Lutts had at last realized the dream of two lives—his own and that of his dead wife, Maw Lutts. Although grievously late, he had now moulded this double dream into a tangible reality; for now before him, in the center of the clearing at the frowsy, feudal base of Moon mountain, and just where the rabid waters of Hellsfork leaped like live, wild things in their down- grade race across forty-odd rugged miles of Kentucky, this grizzled hillman viewed in sober, pious exultation, the product of his log church, all but finished. A church is an acquisition strangely alien to this mountain-piled country, where the strategy of family wars and illicit distilling is religiously pursued. Nevertheless, he and Maw Lutts had dreamed in unison for years and had longed for the culmination of this extravagant, divine purpose. Formerly, it had appeared to him that the propitious hour in their furtive existence had not arrived, although daily he had clearly foreseen it in the rising sun of the morrow. Always with the firm intention to do, he had added postponement to delay, and another broken promise on the creased brow of Maw Lutts and another prayer in her sorrowing heart. However, the belated church was finally upon the perilous premises. Then with the poignant achings that many desirable citizens had felt before him, the old man had gone to the orchard like a penitent truce-breaker, where on his knees in supplicant whispers he had unfolded his tardy atonement and laid it like a tarnished sceptre at the woman's mute, unseeing grave-side. Since the majority of native adults were babies, the magic name of Cap Lutts was mouthed in every cabin on the border range. He held the novel status where popularity was abreast with notoriety. Long since the populace had heard of his intention to build a church. Looking across the epitome of delay, they told themselves that this was the first pledge the old man had ever made, which he had not kept, so now the redeeming news of Cap Lutts' finished meeting-house and the day of dedication had penetrated the remotest habitants of the mountains. This intelligence had gone hither to friend and enemy, pious and wicked alike, with the same mysterious agency and puzzling rapidity that characterizes winged warnings of the on-coming revenuer. Every man and woman in the district, big enough to pull a trigger, knew that he held a certain latent stock in this meeting-house. It came like an unknown heritage suddenly delivered. While some would, surreptitiously, have exchanged their interest for a mustard plaster, they knew that it was not negotiable. They lied aloud, but in their hearts they knew that sooner or later they would follow that magnetic spark Luttsward. They knew that they would either cross the hypnotic threshold of that sanctuary into the halo of sacred enlightenment, or halt without in the darkness of superstition and feudal malice and spend their ammunition to help crush it. There was no intermediate platform. There was no neutral grand-stand wherein the indifferent could take refuge. The populace stood either for or against. Even the lethargic, voteless clay-eaters sat up and took notice like a nest of snakes in the sunshine. The relatives and friendly factions representing the prospective congregation, did homage to Cap Lutts and clamored to make the church a success. The enemy over in Southpaw had already advanced the prophecy that they would take the meeting-house. But the flapping of feudal wings did not perturb this veteran hawk of the hills. His one apprehension was of the common enemy, the "revenuer." There was now but one day between the new church and its dedication. In secret service circles, down in Frankfort, it had long been mooted that the pet aim of Peter H. Burton was to capture old Cap Lutts. Burton had, during his service, previously captured many members of the Lutts faction. The commissioners were ready enough to bind them over, but trials never carried a conviction. Burton had even juggled cases, alternately, on venue writs, between the six Federal Courts in the Eastern District, but the Lutts blood invariably cropped up, stealthful and rich in sympathy, in the precincts of the petit jury room. Acquittal followed acquittal. But now Burton, feeling himself close upon the heels of the King of Moonshiners, altered his procedure and, armed with a premature change of venue to Frankfort, he hunted Lutts with a renewed zeal, keen and pleasurable. Indeed, the younger attachés of the office regarded Cap Lutts as an historic myth. In jest, knowing Burton's affinity for wildcat skins, they hinted that the Lutts in question was merely a wraith-pilot pointing toward new skins—a favorite platitude upon which to stage another hunting vacation. But to Chief Burton, the subject of this jest was far removed from joking premises; mainly for the adequate reason that he himself, like many of his predecessors, had eyed old Cap Lutts more than once. His corporeal being had felt Lutts' lead. Although the astute Burton had toiled a part of each season for eleven consecutive years on the border trail of this subtle law-breaker, Lutts had as yet never seen the county calaboose, or the barriers of a blue-grass jail. Burton had surprised him time and again, but inventory of these encounters always told the same trite story—the moonshiner had simply melted into absence. After the smoke of some of these sorties, Burton had either limped or loped away with hopes mounting over a trail of blood. But these red splotches never led to the man. This feud leader and distilling chieftain of the range still reigned and the stereotyped report to headquarters was simply dated and signed with open blanks, a form to apprise headquarters that the officer was still alive. Under pressure the county authorities periodically sought old Lutts. The times when they did find him, they merely flirted mutually with the faction and subsided harmlessly. With the completion of the meeting-house, Cap Lutts had attained his goal; nor had he suffered the neighboring denizens of the foothills to raise an axe, or donate a single clapboard toward the erection of this infantile sanctuary. It was an enshrined monument to Maw Lutts. It was a mural hanging against Moon mountain, the place of her birth and the scene of her death. It was her own cherished endowment to the rifle-toting, tobacco-swallowing, snuff-chewing community. It was Maw Lutts's and his individual, holy triumph. All Cap Lutts expected of the people was, he told them: "T' cum when th' ridin' pahson rid up t' ded'cate th' gawspel-house; an' tote thar sins t' th' altar, an' donate 'em at th' cross t' be wyshed 'way with th' blood uv Calv'ry—an' keep on a comin' thet they mought be clean an' onspotted an'— Gawd an' my gun'll damn ary hillbilly what darst lift a han' to hender." The church represented months of hard toil, interrupted only when Cap Lutts fled up to the rock-ribbed pockets of the mountain or down into some untrodden ravine to escape Burton, the revenuer. Even in such intervals, the old man had sallied out into the night like the crag-panther, when the moon had turned white; and climbed high, with rifle ready and the hollow-flanked hound at his heels, to visit the clearing and gloat in solitude beneath the trembling stars over the progress of his sacred enterprise. The church itself stood on "squatted" soil. Crowned with rhododendrons and laurel blossoms, it reared its exotic head in defiant challenge to Satan, like a single star upon the horizon of feudal gloom. The level space had cost Lutts nothing but labor. The logs had cost him nothing but work. With his own hands and crude appliances of the back forests he had split, shaped and trimmed eleven thousand cedar clapboards; but when it came to interior finish he was extravagant and fastidious. The white-pine tongue-and-grooved boards that he used to make the platform and the altar, the window and door plates; and the wide, smooth planks turned into benches, all represented cash—and cash was a rarity in the sterile Moon mountain district. And, too, the new gold-hued bell, which now nestled in its cotlike belfry, about to utter its virgin exhortation across those Godless hills, cost money. Cap Lutts had paid this money ungrudgingly, for it was his own. Had he not, together with his son Lem, and Slab, the negro, and the two red steers, plowed the slanting plot that hung on the hip of the mountain and sown the grain, and tilled it, and reaped it, and carried it to the hidden still, where he had brewed it into money? It was Lutts's own scant, hard-earned dollars that had bought the boards, the nails, and the bell. True, it was not a regular church bell; but it was the largest farm bell he could procure and it had taken the steers five hot days to go to Flat Gap Junction and haul back the bell, and the nails, and the polished boards and glass. CHAPTER II BELLE-ANN BENSON Beneath Eagle Crown the four-room cabin reposed in a shelter of spruce-pine, hemlock and cedar. Its plot was covered with countless quaint flowers and its rock-hemmed path to the horse-block in front was lined with pink wild roses and forget-me-nots. Here the creeping ivy and honeysuckle ran wild. Although the mound of Maw Lutts, in the scrub orchard behind the log barn, was green again for the third time, her beloved flowers had come back to earth each year with reassuring, tender messages for Belle-Ann Benson, who had adopted them and had nourished and tended and cherished them with a pathetic devotion. Belle-Ann knew their language well. And when they died—more than at any other season—the kindly, smiling face of old Maw Lutts followed the girl all through the chilly fall days. It was Belle-Ann who had folded Maw Lutts's two hands, one upon the other, back on that terrible day. It was Belle- Ann whom the men found after the battle, crouching in despair over the dear, still form lying in the yard, and crying out to God for Him to make the mute lips speak back to her. Belle-Ann had never known her own mother, but she had found a mother in Maw Lutts. So it was Belle-Ann who fed the martins, and encouraged the wild birds, and the tame squirrels Maw Lutts had loved. The Lutts family now consisted of the old man, two boys, the adopted girl and an old negro who had fled from Lexington when a boy, in the first days of the Rebellion, and who subsequently had found sanctuary at the Lutts abode. He had been permitted to remain because no form of persuasion could induce him to leave the premises, once fed, and had the distinction of being the only negro on Hellsfork. Belle-Ann was a daughter by proxy, since her own mother had died in her babyhood and Maw Lutts had opened her heart and home to the child. Belle-Ann was now some months past sixteen and her unusual physical beauty was noted throughout the mountain community and wondered at by the few strangers who chanced to reach the isolated cabin on Moon mountain. To-night the girl dropped a wooden bucket and gourd after watering the plants, and walked briskly over the carpet of shadows, stepped out under the radiant moon and stood gazing intently up to Eagle Crown, where she saw the magnified outlines of Cap Lutts against the sky. Near by a huge witch-elm butt, sawed into three steps, shaped a horse-block. Upon the topmost step of the block she seated herself. Her brow puckered slightly and she waited with an expectant air. Even the pale moonlight revealed her marked loveliness. Her form was tall for sixteen, with that subtle grace wholly undefinable. Clinging about her head and mantling her shoulders, a mass of natural curls clustered in riotous abundance, shimmering like polished ebony in the moon's rays. Her features were chiseled with a delicate, hellenic touch, and sweetly oval. Her thin nose was straight and short and small; and her red mouth told of unfathomable depths of emotion. Her wide, limpid eyes were like two blue patches of early June sky. Her sleeves were short of her dimpled elbows, and her skirt reached scarce below her knees. Her graceful legs were bare, but her little feet were incased in neat, cow-hide moccasins with the hair on, laced and thonged about her round ankles. A great measure of the girl's physical beauty had been transmitted by her mother, who had been a gentle blue-grass woman, of noted beauty and lineage, and who had in a fit of pique, married the picturesque trapper of the Cumberlands and buried herself in her unloved husband's wilderness existence. Many pathetic tales were told of the great-hearted Tom-John Benson's patient struggle to make his wife happy; but the most beautiful woman the mountain people had ever seen had pined away and had gone to an early end. Belle-Ann's father now worked for a lumber company, down on the Big Sandy. It was only now that he had saved sufficient money to send Belle-Ann to the mission school at Proctor, and so fulfil his wife's last request. Belle-Ann had heard the news only three hours ago. Jutt Orlick, returning from one of his mysterious, periodical visits abroad, had stopped to say that her father had sent word that he would come for her the following week and take her to the school at Proctor. And Orlick, whom the girl distrusted, had not departed without the usual flattery she always half resented. As Belle-Ann sat on the horse-block her little heart was prey to many emotions, and she was well-nigh reduced to tears. Impatient to tell the tidings, she was waiting for the boys, who had been away since early morning, and for the old man to come down from his lofty station. From the cabin door a vague, lank shape came toward her through the shadows. "Yo', Slab!" she called. "Heah me!" responded an old treble voice from the dappled path. When Slab reached the horse-block, although he said nothing to the girl, he took a posture that indicated pointedly that he expected something of her; and she slipped from the horse-block and sat down on the big grapevine family bench a few feet distant. Here a blind hound appeared and, feeling his way slowly and uncertainly, laid his old muzzle in the girl's lap and raised his sightless eyes to where he knew her face must be. Then Slab took Belle-Ann's place on the witch-elm block and produced his beloved instrument—a cross between guitar and banjo, self-made of gut and a gourd. Just as he had done every fair night for years, he was ready to sing his favorite song. He maintained vigorously that if he sat elsewhere than on the horse-block the banjo fell bewitched and refused to answer its master's fingers. Tentatively, he plucked the strings; then launched abruptly into the song he had rendered for years—a sad and stirring melody, telling the early love-story that had been his before the days of emancipation: "You ask what makes this darky weep, Why he, like others, is not gay? What makes the tears roll down his cheek, From early morn till close of day? My story, darkies, you shall hear, For in my memory fresh it dwells, 'Twill cause you then to drop a tear On the grave of my sweet Kitty Wells." When the notes had died away Belle-Ann spoke up: "Slab, ef pap er th' boys don't cum short now, I'll blow th' horn, I reckon." "No—no, honey; doan yo' blow dat horn. Yo' let dat horn blow itse'f if it's got t' blow; but doan you blow it, honey. Yo' jist let pap be—he'll cum heah soon. 'Sides, ain't Slab heah wif yo', honey—ain't Slab heah?" The old negro picked the strings with a preface to the second verse of "Kitty Wells," his condolence being entirely lost on Belle-Ann. As he gathered a solemn breath to begin, the disconsolate girl, sitting on the vine-bench in the moonlight, raised a protesting hand and stopped him. "Slab, ef I don't blow th' horn I jest got t' cry." Slab settled the banjo jerkily between his long, thin legs and rolled indulgent eyes upon her. "Now, looky heah, honey; yo' ain't gwine t' take on so, is you? Yo' oughter be tickled inter a keniption fit, yo' ought, 'stead of actin' up. Why, honey, jist give praise to de good Lord dat yo' at las' got de chanst! Yo'll cum back home powerful smart an' edicated, like my missus wus 'fore de war. "An' when a li'le gal gits edication, she naturally gits purttier; an' if yo' gits purttier dan yo' is now—why, honey, yo'll shore cum back er angel! Now, doan be pesticatin'. Smile up, smile up! Gwine t' school ain't gwine t' kill nobudy." As Slab concluded these cheering words, he poised his banjo again and as his lips parted the girl stopped him with a gesture. "Slab, air thes my heart heah—right heah?" she queried, pressing a hand upon her breast. "Sho', honey!" Slab assured her testily, striving to disguise his own impatience. "Now, tell me why yo' ax dat—jist tell Slab what fer yo' ax sich er sorry question noways?" "Slab, I 'low my heart'll burst in two when I got t' go 'way!" she returned unsteadily, her black-fringed lids blinking bravely to keep back the mist that would creep across the violet of her eyes. Slab gazed at her speechless, and heaved a hopeless sigh. Tenderly, Belle-Ann lifted the blind hound's reluctant head from her lap, stepped nearer to the old negro, and held a profound, exacting finger close to his face. "Slab, will yo' promise me somethin'? I kin trust yo'-all, Slab, ef yo' promise ag'inst the witch. Will yo' promise Belle- Ann somethin', Slab?" urged the girl, and her sweet bell-voice fell subdued and imploring. Slab's mouth opened slowly and he hesitated. He would have died for Belle-Ann; but he was much opposed to dragging in the witch, because he feared to make his sacred witch a party to any contract that carried the slightest chance of rupture, and thereby hold him to eternal reprisal. "Will yo' promise thes, Slab?" the girl urged solemnly. "Air yo' sho' I kin do it, honey?" he probed, loose-lipped and with eyes that rolled wider. "Sho' yo' kin!" "Ez yo' say I kin do it, me promises," he assented dubiously. "Cross yo' heart on th' witch-block!" she demanded. He solemnized the pledge with a gnarled and bony hand, and the girl's eyes welled full and her throat pained. "Slab, yo' must promise to be good to ol' Ben heah—feed em an' bed em reg'lar, but don't give em no cracklin's. An', Slab, yo' must promise to pick the flowers every Sabbath, jest like I alers do—yo' knows the ones well's I do— pertic'lar th' for-get-me-nots over yon by th' grind-stone. Yo' must pick 'em in th' mornin' early, Slab—every Sabbath —an' put 'em on Maw Lutts's grave. Will yo' fergit?" A deep breath relieved Slab's tenseness as he agreed effusively. "Lord, goodness! Yo' jist leave it t' Slab, honey! He do dat ebry single Sabbaf!" "An', Slab, when hit gits cold an' th' leaves air gone an' th' flowers air all daid, yo' must pick th' geraniums outer th' boxes inside an' put 'em on Maw's grave—an' when hit gits powerful cold an' snows hard an' th' snow gits piled up on Maw's grave—would yo' care—would yo' go, Slab, an'—an'—an'—push hit off—an'——" Her petitions thickened, tumbled together in her aching throat, and refused to cross her trembling lips. She turned away quickly. At the log bench she sank slowly down with her black head in her arm. The heavy curls clustered around her face and caressed her neck. She sobbed in soft, whimpering outbursts. The blind hound thrust his nose questioningly into her lap, licking her free hand, and caught the tears from her young heart warm upon his gray face. He whined aloud and reached for her wet cheek. The old negro fumbled at random and did not speak. Turning, he looked upward to where Cap Lutts sat in the flood of moonlight on the palm of rock; as silent and motionless as the inanimate pillar of granite under him. Slab's eyes wandered down to the trail and he spoke hastily to the distressed girl. "Honey, heah cum de boys!" CHAPTER III THE TRAITOR Belle-Ann jumped instantly to her feet, looked, brushed her eyes with her hand, and hastened to meet them, her curls bobbing and her bare legs and arms gleaming in the moon's luster. Little Bud turned off toward the cabin, but Lem's tall figure came straight ahead. "Lem," she cried excitedly, "I got t' go—dad sent word by Orlick. Dad's a comin' heah t' take me t' th' mission school. Air yo' sorry, Lem?" Lem halted as if struck. Then, recovering from the surprise, he took her hand and they continued toward the witch-elm block. Slab had disappeared. "Sho', I'm sorry, Belle-Ann," Lem answered. "Yo'-all don't 'low I'd be tickled t' lose yo', do yo'? But I 'low hit's fer th' best, an' yo' know Maw wanted hit, too," he ended, with a touch of sadness. "Yes, Lem," she agreed, "thet's why I'll try t' be brave, 'cause Maw Lutts alers talked t' me 'bout my schoolin' same's she did 'bout th' church. Lem, I do wish Maw could jest see th' new church now thet pap's got hit finished! Hit looks jest like she said, Lem. I 'low she'd jest cry fer gladness, wouldn't she?" Lem nodded absently and quickly put a question that had been waiting from the instant he heard of Orlick's visit. "What time ded Orlick cum?" "He cum short past sun-down," returned Belle-Ann as the two sat down on the bench. "Ded he parley 'bout long?" "Jest a short spell. I wouldn't talk t' em much." Lem stood up. He was long and lank, but broad of shoulder for a boy of eighteen. He had a pleasing, intelligent countenance, with light, steadfast eyes that never looked askance. He removed his wide, soft hat and gazed up to Eagle Crown. "Ded pap see Orlick?" he asked. Belle-Ann shook her curls in the negative. "Belle-Ann, ef yo' takes pertic'lar notice, every time Jutt Orlick cums t' Moon mountain somethin' alers happens— somethin' goes wrong. 'Peers like things starts back'ards." "I 'low he air a hoodoo," observed Belle-Ann: "but he do look soldierfied, don't he, Lem?" she added, with a subtle regard for Orlick's military aspect and his bombastic airs. Lem shot a jealous, reproachful look at the girl, turning sharply as she rose, and pointed down to a gap in the scrub timber, which was half lighted by the moon. They caught the fleeting shadow of a horseman mounting the trail to the cabin. "Hit's Orlick!" Lem announced. The sound of metallic hoof-strokes came rapid and distinct. When the rider had looped the spur they beheld the front of Orlick's horse coming head on up the moon-path, his hocks now in the air. As always, Orlick had flank-spurred his mount on the last lap, and the animal plunged, panting, to the horse-block, and brought up stiff-legged, with red-rimmed nostrils and distended jaws, fighting a cruel Spanish bit. Orlick rolled out of the Mexican saddle, laughed shortly, and drawled: "Howdy, yo'-all?" and smirked as he always did. "I hain't seen yo'-all in a coon's age, Lem," he added cordially, though his evil eyes were upon the girl as he extended his hand in greeting. Lem Lutts touched the outstretched hand briefly. Belle-Ann stood aloof with a look of suspicious admiration on her lovely countenance. "I hain't seen yo'-all 'bout much nuther," answered Lem, with a contemptuous scrutiny of Orlick's brave trappings. Orlick chuckled. "Yes—I'm gittin' over th' country a little nowadays. But, say, Lem, I cum up to tell ye thar's a stranger down at th' cypress cut what wants to come up. He's down yonder now a waitin'. He's got some business with the cap'n." Belle-Ann shrank away, shuddering. "I rec'on hit's Burton, th' ghost-man," she muttered under her breath. Always since that memorable day when she had knelt beside Maw Lutts' dead body in the yard did the coming of a stranger thrill her with a great fear—a fear that stirred the venom that already tenanted her heart; a vivific thing, spawned at the killing of Maw Lutts. Time had never healed this wound. Time had only nurtured its corrosive, growing poison. Time that came to others of mankind to succor and heal, had never assuaged Belle-Ann's heart-hurt. Struggle as she would to forget, she only remembered that she had struggled, and the aching grew on. It was a silent, self-contained suffering,—a hatred for the law that sneaked into their home and dealt death. This supernatural hulk, Burton, embodied the law. Burton, this lupine, leering lover of blood—this killer of women. When Orlick announced that a stranger had business with the old man, the revenuer's ugly visage popped before the girl more vividly than ever. That grim hated shadow of prey darted upon her tensioned senses and made her shiver, sending a-scutter and a-scurry all the innate righteous instincts whose home had been her heart; leaving in its void a well of hate that congealed and turned into a live thing, that squirmed, burrowed, and crawled to and fro in her soul; armed with a hundred claws to goad and agonize and spread a misery through her young life. All this warped the girl's spiritual being and imperiled the beauty of her countenance, for at times it mingled the lettering of its presence with the charms of her face. Without a word, but with a significant look at Belle-Ann, Lem took the cow-horn suspended over his shoulder by a rawhide, pointed it upward toward the lone figure on the cliff and gave a long, sonorous blast. Instantly the solitary figure on high moved and disappeared from view. Belle-Ann drew apart, while the two men stood together, Orlick doing the talking, and watched for the old man to come out into the trail. There came a slight sound behind and, like a shadow, old Cap Lutts stepped forth under the trees and confronted them, his polished rifle gleaming in the moonlight, and a big, spotted hound hugging his heels. His straight, powerful form rose to giant proportions. His very presence pulsed keen discernment, subtle alertness, an agile, seemingly implacable strength and aggressive tenacity. He listened in silence as Orlick told his mission and then said quietly: "Lem, you an' Orlick go down yonder an' lead th' party up heah ef he's alone; if he ain't yo'-all blow the horn. An' yo', Orlick," the old man added, with eyes that bored into Orlick's smirking face, "what air thes I heered about your trapesin' around over yon in Southpaw?" Orlick shifted his weight to the other foot. "Yo'-all ain't 'lowin' to fix nothin' on Jutt Orlick—on a Orlick, cap'n?" he cried huskily. "Where's my pap an' four brothers—where's Hank an' Bill an' Tom Orlick, an' Tod an' old Elijah Lutts Orlick? "Shot to pieces heah on Hellsfork, fightin' the revenuers an' th' McGills! I kin lead yo' to their bones down yonder!" He pointed his trooper's hat trembling in his outstretched hand. "An' whut air I heah fer t'-night? Yo'-all ain't 'lowin' to fix nothin' on the onlyst Orlick left, cap'n?" Throughout this fervent defense not for one instant did the piercing, chill eyes of old Lutts leave the boy's face. "Orlick," he began slowly, "I hain't studyin' 'bout the past. Hit's the time a comin'. I jest axed yo', have yo' been over in Southpaw?" "Naw, I hain't!" declared Orlick, flushing slightly. "Have yo' snooked with the revenuers below?" "Not by er damn sight!" "Leastways," observed the old man as he drew back, "I 'low yo're in bad company, son; but ef yo' ever cross Hellsfork er I know plumb sho' thet yo' snook with th' revenuers below, don't never 'low me t' git eyes on ye', Orlick." "Don't force th' old man t' lift a hand agin' yo' pint-blank, git out o' th' mountings first. Now, yo' boys go an' fetch th' stranger party up. Ef hit's thet infernal ghost-dog revenuer, don't skeer em off—bring em up, quick! Ef hit's a sheriff, don't hurt his feelin's—bring em up, cose I'm lonesome like." Orlick fully understood the import of Cap Lutts' parting words, and, casting a covert look toward the cabin where he knew Belle-Ann lingered in the shadows, he swaggered along after Lem, leading his horse. And the while a bold design shaped itself in his perfidious heart as he pretended loyal friendship to the silent boy trudging beside him. A cloud of dark suspicion hung over the head of Jutt Orlick. Things had happened in the mountains the past two years which subsequently pointed accusing fingers in his direction. Unless he was present no one ever knew just where Orlick was. Two years since he had disappeared and come back after nine months, wearing soldier's garb, which he had affected ever since. He told lurid tales of his conquests and adventures with the Mexican revolutionists. He elaborated on the gilded splendor and the beautiful things that the big cities held. He recounted deeds of heroism abroad in which he was sole hero and he poured these fabulous tales into Belle-Ann's ears at every opportunity. At the end of his periodical migrations he always returned with a new horse, and sums of money that astounded the humble mountaineers. For more than two years, Orlick had been determined to possess himself of Belle-Ann Benson. But he resolved first to free himself of Lem Lutts. He had noted of late the subtle little courtesies exchanged between Belle-Ann and Lem, and he knew that they had arrived at the realization that they were not brother and sister. Was it not reasonable to conclude that, in view of the girl's beauty, it was only a matter of time before Lem would take Belle-Ann for his own? The mere thought stirred Orlick's hot blood to a fury, as with a scowl he fixed his eyes upon the figure leading the downward trail and he was seized with a mad impulse to shoot Lem in the back. His hand crept downward. The cool contact of steel in his holster woke him to his folly and he trailed along, curbing his impatience, resolved to follow to the letter the plan he had worked out to get Belle-Ann out of the mountains and away, or bring ruin down on the whole Lutts family. When Lem Lutts returned to the cabin an hour later, with a large, tired man and a fagged-out horse, Orlick was not with them. Old Lutts was pacing to and fro in the moonlight. He was occupied mainly with thoughts of his new church and the dedication on Sunday. The stranger below was to him a matter of secondary concern. He had been a hunted man all his life. Therefore, there was neither novelty nor consternation in the reflection. The old man stalked up to the horse-block and greeted the stranger. "Howdy? Sort o' warmish t'-night. Whut mought be yo'-all's business seein' me?" "This is Mr. Lutts, I take it?" ventured the newcomer. "Thes air ol' Cap Lutts, o' Moon mountain," corrected the old man in a precise tone. "Yes, certainly," continued the man hastily. "Well, captain, I'm a deputy sheriff. I was despatched to see you and deliver a message from the sheriff." Here he revealed his shield, then unbuckled his belt, containing a pair of pistols, and hung them over the saddle-tree. "And, captain," he pursued wearily but genially, "I'm dog tired. I've been five hours coming up the last five miles. Can I talk with you a bit, captain?" The old man, who had listened intently, spoke up now, and there was a touch of sarcasm in his drawl. "Yo' air a new deputy, I 'low—hain't yo', sheriff?" "You are right. I was appointed two weeks ago, and I'll get even with somebody for sending me on this Godless trail—I smell some spite somewhere." "Wal, set down heah, sheriff, an' perceed," invited Lutts, with a generous gesture toward the bench. "I can state my position and my errand, captain, in very few words," began the new deputy, who had plainly lost a measure of his official zeal along the almost impassable trail, and now appeared disgruntled. "The sheriff, the district attorney, and the collector of this district have gotten together and have drafted an ultimatum and I was chosen to deliver it to you and get your answer. They propose to quash all the various indictments now against you for illicit distilling and for shootings alleged through warrants by some of the McGill faction." "Both the Commonwealth, the civil and Federal authorities stand as a unit to clear the dockets of these charges, providing that you come down and sign an agreement to cease all further operations pertaining to feud wars and the illicit distilling of liquor and turn over all your present distilling property to the government. That's it in a nutshell. I just want your answer—yes or no, captain—and my work is done." The sheriff looked up into the inscrutable face for answer. The old man smiled good-humoredly and tossed his long hair backward. "I air all-fired sorry, sheriff," he responded calmly, "thet yo'-all hit heah so late. I want t' show yo' th' gawspel-house. I built hit all myself—every dang lick an' cut, sheriff; an' I air a givin' hit t' Kaintucky, pertic'lar these parts whar hit's needed bad like. Lem, tote thes hoss back an' rub em an' fresh em an' fill em an' stir thet Slab roun'. Tell em t' step like a catamount an' hash up a hot snack fo' th' sheriff. Pull a yaller young pullet offen the south limb o' th' burnt cedar over yon. An', Lem-boy, yo'-all tell Belle-Ann t' jog thet Slab up a pinch. Sheriff, yo' hain't a goin' 'way from heah, leastways till mornin'. "Ez I wus a sayin', sheriff, we-uns air bin a needin' a gawspel-house hyarbouts fo' a hundred yeers—now hit's arriv'. Thar's some powerful pesky folks hyarbouts, sheriff," with a deprecating gesture towards Southpaw. "Th' McGills mought hev j'ined in ef they'd ac'ed right. Maw wus fo' peace—Maw Lutts wus—Maw alers hankered fo' peace. She air up yon in th' groun' now. Thet damn ghost-man, Burton, kilt her!" Lutts turned his face quickly away and was silent. A huge hand slid coaxingly over the gleaming surface of the rifle- barrel between his legs. "Sheriff, hit hain't thes rifle-gun's fault—hit hain't my eye ner my hand, I'll swear. Sheriff, I've hit thet damn ghost- revenuer ez many times ez yo' see rocks at yore feet thar. He air holler inside, sheriff. "Yo' know outside shoots hain't a hurtin' nobuddy—hit's when th' bullets gits down in a buddy's in'ards an' gits tangled up with his insides thet counts. Thet revenuer hain't got no insides. He air holler, sheriff." The old man paused in silence, his auditor pondering the manner of man before him. "Ez I wus a sayin', sheriff, th' McGills mought 'a' j'ined my gawspel-house ef they had ac'ed half right. One Sabbath mornin', 'fore I built th' gawspel-house, I follered Maw Lutts down t' th' brink of Hellsfork, Maw a totin' a truce-flag. "I hollers across t' ol' Sap McGill; an' I says, 'Sap McGill,' I says—'seein' thet we-all air even up now on th' killin', ef yo'-all lays down I lays down.' An' Maw Lutts up an' hollers across, too, an' says: 'Sap McGill, ef yo'-all lays down yo' kin jine th' gawspel-house pap 'lows t' built on Hellsfork, an' we-uns 'll all have our sins wyshed away an' stop a fightin'.' "Sheriff, ol' Sap, he hollers back, quick like, an' onery ez a varmint, an' says: 'To hell with yore gawspel-house on Hellsfork! Hyars yo' answer.' An' he shot me twice 'fore I could believe he wus so low-down onery an' pesky as to do hit, an' Maw a holdin' up th' truce-flag! So I had t' kill em." The old man's eyes swept the moonlit distance that embraced the church as he went on. "I 'low we-uns 'll show yo' th' gawspel-house early in th' mornin', sheriff. Ef yo' don't 'low t' go I'll pick yo' up in my arms an' tote yo' down thar. Yo' got t' see hit. Thar hain't no purttier gawspel-house down Blue-grass." Belle-Ann stood before them. "I 'low yo'-all kin be comin' along now, pap, 'fore th' snack gits cold," she said shyly in her low, sweet drawl. As the men rose the sheriff caught himself ogling. Following the gliding, moccasined feet, he noted the grace and loveliness of her lithe, round form. He assured himself that he had never beheld such artless, unusual, natural beauty in a girl. And he pondered soberly upon a lineage of blue blood manifest in her face, her form, her voice, and manner. A restless murmur rippled through the cool cedars where the birds had gone to sleep. Cautiously a small shape with wizened face slid from out the mystic shadows, lugging a rifle twice his length. Even for his eleven years, Buddy Lutts was undersized. His body was thin and small. His reasoning was little. But his heart was big with hate for that devil-thing, the law. He vanished as noiselessly and furtively as he had come. Little Bud had overheard every word the sheriff had uttered. CHAPTER IV AN ULTIMATUM A veil of azure morning mist lingered at the apex of Henhawk's knob. A young eagle—aggressively bold in his youth— sallied forth into the mystic dawn, setting himself high on Eagle Crown rock, and surveyed the dim world with a challenge in his blinkless agate eye. The air was fragrant with the perfume of a thousand blossoms. Splashes of crimson and gold dappled the east, and a great sun shot its lances of molten glory beyond the mountain- tops. Before the sun showed half its russet disk the deputy sheriff sat his horse at the witch-elm block in front of the Lutts cabin, preparatory to departure. The Lutts household, including Slab, was on hand with hospitable farewells—though little Bud hung back suspiciously. At no time during the sheriff's stop had Cap Lutts uttered a word of reference to the business that had brought the officer to his door. Nor had the sheriff broached the subject again. With keen understanding and quick insight he waited patiently for the answer to his mission. But now, as he sat his horse on the verge of departure, he looked at old Lutts expectantly and with direct inquiry in his eyes. Lutts caught the import, and answered with small concern. "Oh, yes! Yo' jest tell th' sheriff an' them revenuers down below thet ef they want th' ole man bad 'nough, t' cum up an' root em out." The deputy knew this was final, and as the old moonshiner's great hand closed over his in parting the officer secretly hoped that the arm of the law would fall short of the Lutts domicile. "Well, captain, I'm afraid they'll start something below—especially that man over from Frankfort—that Burton. He's awful determined, and he blames us some. Good-by!" A short distance away the officer pulled up short and, turning in his saddle, beckoned to the old man. The deputy leaned over and spoke in undertones, as though the rocks and trees had ears. "Captain," he asked significantly, "is that fellow, Jutt Orlick, a friend of yours? Remember, I haven't said a word, captain; not a word!" For a full minute the old man stood looking after the rider. Then a new light was added to his fixed suspicion of Jutt Orlick. High noon of the following day found Orlick riding slowly, with loose rein, up the twisted trail toward the Lutts cabin. His horse was lathered and blown. He had covered the rugged distance from the junction since dawn, where he had held all-night counsel with Peter Burton, the revenuer. With astuteness and cunning Orlick had instigated a conspiracy that would have done credit to a city-bred malefactor, and for which Burton praised him extravagantly and, incidentally, liquorously. Burton had offered to secure Orlick an appointment as deputy marshal in the eighth district at Danville as recompense for his espionage and treason against his people. But even Orlick's audacious spirit cast the thought of this honor out of his mind decisively, and not without a shudder. Providing the raid succeeded, upon the plea that Orlick feared the Luttses, Burton had pledged himself to keep Lem and old Captain Lutts in jail to the last technical hour. He further promised to frustrate any attempt at communication with the Lutts faction and intercept any messages that they might attempt to launch from the prison. Burton confided to Orlick that his chief ai...