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Read Ebook: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine September 1913 Vol. LXXXVI No. 5 by Various
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Ebook has 1451 lines and 103619 words, and 30 pages
"What do you want?" was the hospitable greeting that issued from the cavern of his huge chest.
"Mr. Dudley Gaines," I answered, using instinctively the name of introduction that I had seen succeed a few minutes earlier.
"He ain't here; but if you are his woman, come in," was the answer, and as Dudley's property I entered the Stivers's abode.
Even in my tragic situation for an instant my temper rose. Why should man's possession justify the existence of a woman in the eyes of the primitive? However, masculine justification of life is a delicious feeling to a woman in a dark and fearful wood and--But I'll tell you about that later.
With becoming gravity and timidity I entered the living-room of the moonshiner's hut, and weakly seated myself in a chair he pointed out to me in a corner by an open window.
"Brat's got fits, and the woman is out there tending it," was my host's ample excuse for the non-appearance of my hostess.
At his words my heart jumped and then stood still. I had never been in the house with a fit before, and the feeling was gruesome, coming so close on the heels of the woolly, furry things in the woods.
Then as I poised myself on the edge of the chair, holding on tight to keep myself from running out into the night, an eery wail came from the back of the house, and I collapsed on the seat, with a queer, suffocating pain in the place of that jump. I had never noticed a child's cry before, and something moved in the region of my solar plexus.
"Can't--can't something be done?" I ventured in desperation.
"Naw," came the answer in a drawl. "I reckon it is bound fer kingdom come this trip sure. Leader will take a look at it when he comes in fer a round-up of the gang. They'll all be late to-night, on 'count of some dirty business over at Hitch It. If you want to go to bed, that's the best bed in the lean-to out there we keep for over-nights. Better git settled and outen the way 'fore the gang gits here. They're 'most too rough fer calico like you to stay around, and there'll be a big fight on 'fore it's over. Leader is snorting rough over that knifing at Hitch It, and somebody'll be cut down with power by him 'fore he's done with it. The woman is too upsot with the kid to see to you; but bedding is all you need, now dark has come. Better git to cover right away."
As he was speaking, he took the candle and led the way into a little shed-room, while I followed with trembling knees, and the jelly of fear quivering all over my body. Every moonshine murder about which I had ever read in the papers trod in martial array before my mental eyes, and my breath was just a flutter between my chattering teeth. It really is a triumph of the survival of the life force in the human body that I am alive to tell the tale to you to-day.
"They's light enough from the window for you to roll in," the man said as he pointed to a low bed, built of logs and boughs along the wall next to the front room. "Better git to cover and stay there, a calico like you, with the boys as rough as they be; you mightn't like 'em. I reckon they better not know you're here, on 'count of the row that's coming over that knifing; so lay close."
And even before he had time to depart with his candle, I made a dive beneath the patched quilt, only grasping my hat in my hand instead of keeping it on my head. Then, as still as my trembling limbs would let me, I lay close to the rough, thin, pine planks that separated me from what seemed the only other human being in the world. And for hours it seemed I lay there and panted and groveled in spirit with terror and helplessness, waiting, waiting, for something dreadful to happen, and almost wishing it would come and be over.
Across the mountain-tops there began to be distant mutterings of thunder, and in the flashes of lightning I could see restless, dark birds wing by the small window. And save for the thunderings, there was a stillness that must have been on the waters before the first dawn reigned. I could hear my heart beat like a muffled motor, and only the uncanny wail broke the silence now and again, while once I thought I heard a woman's stifled moan that sent a shudder to the very core of my body.
And as I lay and cowered in that darkness, the mood of self-realization came back upon me, and alone in that terror of blackness I turned at bay and faced myself. Was that coward thing I that lay helpless while a woman alone moaned away the life of her tortured child, and a plan for murder was plotted with my full knowledge? Why didn't I run out into that dreadful night and warn the victim, stop him from stepping into the dreadful trap laid for him? And right then I impeached myself. I had been guarded and fended and had all humanity nurtured out of me, so that, rather than risk my own pitiful little life, I was willing to "lie close" and let my brother human be murdered in cold blood.
"But women are weak," I argued in my own defense, "and terrible, wolfish things like these they cannot control or prevent. They must let them take their course."
"Weak women have steeled themselves to the saving of their brothers and sisters centuries long," came the still, small voice that seemed to be hovering over my breast.
"I can't risk my own life for that of a rough moonshiner who probably spends his time whittling a stick to throw away," I sobbed in answer to myself.
"What more important thing than whittling a stick do you do with your life?" came the question, relentlessly.
"Nothing," I sobbed under my breath, as a vision of all the nothings I had done in my life came before me with a flash of the lightning that seemed to illumine the inside of the very inner me.
"And that other woman suffering in there, why don't I go to her?" I demanded of myself, and failed to find an answer.
"Afraid of the roughness of some mountain man who would scarcely dare harm your brother's 'woman'?" I asked contemptuously from above my own breast. "You a 'woman,' if you let another woman watch her child die alone!"
Desperate at this goad, I sat up, and was pushing back the quilt, when the muffled sound of heavy boots came from across the clearing, and in another flash I saw a file of men, each one of whom looked ten feet tall, each with a gun on his arm, come out of the black woods and turn to the front of the house. I melted back to cover, and lay drawing breath like a drowning man.
Quietly they came into the room next to that in which I was hiding, and their drawly voices had a subdued and terrible sound as they exchanged a few remarks in guarded tones.
"Leader come?" one man asked from so near the pine board against which I trembled that he couldn't have been a foot away from me.
"Naw; and Bill is waiting in the woods to ketch him 'fore he gits here, if he kin," came the mumble of my host's big voice.
"It'll be nip and tuck 'twixt 'em, and lay out the worst man feet due west," another voice took up the gruesome chorus.
"That's Bill now, coming outen the woods," exclaimed Stivers, ominously. "I reckon he thinks he missed Leader. Don't nobody say nothing when he comes in, but let him set and wait for his knock-out. Nobody's business but Leader's."
Listening frantically, I heard the doomed man's hesitating feet shuffle into the room and the chair groan as he took his seat amid the glum silence.
And there I lay, and with Bill I waited I didn't know for what, some nameless horror that would kill the life in me and make me a dishonored thing all my life--a human too cowardly to cry out the word of warning to another of God's creatures. And through it all the little child wailed and the woman moaned.
Then in the midst of another thick muttering from the head of Old Harpeth, which was followed by a vivid flash, I heard another pair of feet step on the threshold of the cabin. I cowered under the quilt, held my breath, and took the bullet into my own heart--or thought I did.
Then high and clear through the flash of the lightning, over the mutterings of the thunder and the scuffle of the men's feet, accompanied by a glad cry from the moaning woman, there came a voice of an archangel singing in tones of command that thrilled that whole mountain until it seemed to shake with its reverberations:
"Stand up! stand up for Jesus! Ye soldiers of the cross; Lift high His royal banner, It must not suffer loss."
I lay still, and something poured into my heart that was a peace made from the glory of the storm, the moan of the woman, and the song of a dawn-bird. Out of the darkness my soul came like--I think I partly expressed it in the first sentence of this confession, if you will turn back and see, Evelyn dear.
After the men had sung the wonderful old hymn through to its very last lines,
"To him that overcometh A crown of life shall be; He with the King of Glory Shall reign eternally,"
Bill and I kept very still and took our "knock-out."
Bill had stuck a knife into a gallant over at Hitch It for offering to exchange snuff-sticks with Malinda Budd, and I could easily detect a decided vein of sympathy in the voice of Leader while he administered a rousing reproof to the knife, but extolled the use of fists in such cases, much to the approval of the rest of the gang.
In fact, that was the greatest sermon ever spoken in the English language on the theme of justice, courage, feminine protection, manly dignity, and brotherly love, and it was done in about five minutes, I should say. Every word of it hit Bill fair and square, and me also, to say nothing of all the rest of the world. During the last minute and a half of the discourse the men were indulging in muttered "Ahmens" and "Glory be's," and I could hardly restrain myself from throwing off the quilt and--well, you know, Evelyn, that Grandmother Wickliffe was a pillar in the Methodist Church of Hillsboro, and at times of great emotion, during the visit of the presiding elder, she did--shout. Aunt Grace never likes to hear it mentioned.
Now, let me see, this is just about the beginning of the real story, and I am so anxious to tell it all, though I really feel a hesitancy. However, when I am through with the letter, I can leave out any part of it that doesn't sound seemly for me to tell about him--and me, can't I?
To begin with, I hardly know how to make you understand about that baby's stomach, and how near a tragedy it was. Don't laugh! I tremble when I think about it, and I don't ever believe I'll learn to do it to them. I hope I won't have to practise on one of my own first; but, then, it would be awful to kill another woman's baby experimenting on it, wouldn't it? I'd better not think about that now, or I can't tell the rest of the story.
And while I was lying there under the quilt, just shouting in my soul with ancestral ardor, I was called to come forth and attest my new convictions. And I did. If I hadn't got that faith in God just a few minutes before on the wings of a great emotion, I never could have steeled myself to taking that awful purple, twitching baby and helping Gabriel do the dreadful things to it he did. I would have taken to the woods at the first look at it. But I know now that I had got the real religion that darts right through the emotions, and prods you up to do things. And I did them.
"It'll die, and I can't hold it," whimpered the poor exhausted mother when Gabriel told her to hold the baby's mouth open while he poured in the hot water. At that time I was still safe and rejoicing over myself under the quilt.
"No use, Leader; I've done give' up," and I heard her fling herself on the floor and begin to moan in chorus with the baby.
It took me just half a minute to get to my feet, into that other room, and that baby in my arms, as awful to look at as it was. Of course it seemed as if God was honoring me by crowding works on my new faith pretty closely, and how I got through with such credit I don't see; but I did.
"You'll have to show me just what to do; I never touched a baby before, but I will try to help," I said to Gabriel, who was looking at me in an absolute astonishment and devout thankfulness that encouraged my new-found capableness.
"A woman, thank God!" I heard him mutter before he spoke.
"Tip him on your arm, hold his head close against your breast, with your finger down his throat, while I pour in this hot water; then turn him over on your knee quick when it is about to come up. He is full of fried potatoes, and that is what is making the spasms. I'll hold his legs with my left hand, so he can't kick away from you. We must get down enough of this water to bring up all of the potatoes."
Gabriel's voice was quick and respectful, as if he were speaking to somebody that had as much intellect and manual training as himself. I suppose that is what helped me through with those dreadful hours of time that it took to work up that awful potato--that and the positive way I said:
"Now, God, help me, please, and quick!"
At last it all came forth, and I don't suppose it really was hours; but the baby was apparently done for.
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