The trouble at Pinelands A detective story
racket, came to an open door and looked after us with indifferent,
lackluster eyes. Of men we saw nothing, save once.
Then I glanced up, warned by the pricking of my horse’s ears, to catch a
glimpse of a fierce, bearded face, which glowered down at us from the
rhododendrons above the trail. The sun, just dropping below a peak,
glinted dully from a long rifle barrel, as it moved slightly to bear
upon us.
“Cough, Somers! Cough!” I whispered.
Our leader, quick to grasp my hint, coughed nobly, until he swayed in
the saddle, handkerchief to his lips.
I spurred forward to support him. “Easy, boys,” said I, loudly enough to
be heard from the hillside I hoped. “The mountain air is hard on those
lungs, but we’ll find a good place for your house to-morrow, I hope.
Remember, the doctor said these hills were the only place you could
live.”
We rode on; I, for one, with my heart in my throat. My back muscles
quivered and flinched. But no bullet pierced them; no gunshot cut
through the silence of the hills. After a mile or two I explained.
Somers shrugged. “They don’t seem to welcome strangers,” he admitted.
“It’s a cheery country.” His eyes followed the sharp-toothed, jagged
hills, which ringed us in; the abrupt, bleak mountains of North
Carolina, whose ridges are too sharp-edged for concealment, were all
about us, and the blue sky showed between the trunks of the single,
straggling row of slender trees, which found difficult life there. “The
hills look about as friendly as their people. Still, I don’t believe
they’ll shoot us without stopping to ask questions first.”
With this dubious encouragement we rode on through the long shadows of
sunset, which comes so early there; for the sun dropped behind the
encircling hills in midafternoon, they were so high.
The rough trails wound on, forking and twisting, and we rode slower and
slower, while our leader puzzled over the map Anne Christie had drawn.
Dusk came on, and then darkness, and still we rode, Somers scowling
uncertainly. At last we made out a point of light in the distance.
Our leader pulled up. “We’re lost,” he admitted. “I haven’t an idea
which way to turn, even if we could see the trails, which we can’t. I
move we stop at that house and ask our way.”
So we blundered on through the darkness, and that lone spark of light
grew and became the oblong of an unglazed window, toward which our tired
steeds trotted, unguided. A yelping, baying avalanche of dogs poured
down the slope, to bark and snap at our horses’ legs, and to jump
viciously up for a grip upon our own. We halted.
“Hello, the house!” called Somers, reluctant to dismount because of the
dogs.
Abruptly the light above us went out. We heard a door close somewhere.
Then the clamor of the hounds lessened, and presently it ceased. They
lowered their tails, began to sneak away, as I could see through the
dusk. And a harsh voice was raised, so close to us that I jumped
involuntarily, and my horse plunged.
“What’s yore business here, strangers?”
Somers coughed promptly. “We’re honest travelers,” I explained. “My
nephew here has consumption; his doctor has sent him into the mountains
to live, and we’re hunting a place. Can you tell us how to reach Devil’s
Branch?”
“Devil’s Branch?” The man’s voice held a queer, interrogative note.
“Huh! Strike a light, stranger; le’me look at you-all. Hit’s a right
onhealthy place for sick folks, the Devil’s Branch. Uh-_huh_!”
I despair of reproducing in print his twanging drawl, his quaint idiom,
his pronunciations, so different from the speech of the lowlands, less
than fifty miles away.
Somers lit a match obediently, and its flickering light shone on his
lean, sallow face, exaggerating the hollows of his cheeks, throwing his
bold, hooked nose into high relief.
“Huh?” asked the mountaineer. “’Member I got a bead on you-all agin’ th’
sky line! Are puny lookin’, hain’t yuh?” Then with renewed suspicion:
“What you-all lookin’ for on Devil’s Branch?”
“A place to build a cabin,” I told him.
“Down, Tige!” he said, as one of the hounds began to yap again. “Hit’s a
right cur’us place fer furriners. Don’t look right t’ me, nohow. Huh?
Hain’t my lookout, no ways; hit’s Lafe’s bus’ness. You-all jus’ keep
a-goin’ up th’ Branch yander an’ pass two li’l’ runs; at th’ next run
don’t go no furderer, but turn up hit an’ foller ’long.”
“How far?”
“Hit’s right smart of a piece--mebbe two set-downs an’ a long look.
Yassuh, hit’s all o’ that.”
“And how’ll we know when we get there?”
The mountaineer chuckled. “Ho, you-all’ll _know_. Ho, yas! Hain’t no
wonderment ’bout that!”
I asked another question, but there was no reply. The man had vanished
as silently as he had come; his long gun barrel no longer showed
faintly, menacing us. I was relieved. We rode on, our tired horses
stumbling and laboring among the loose pebbles, following directions as
best we might in that Stygian blackness.
We passed by the two runs and turned up the third, which seemed to lead
steeply up through a narrow valley, almost a cañon. On either side long,
sharp ridges stood blackly out against the sky.
The way grew rougher, steeper; the horses stumbled over fallen logs,
brambles tore at our clothing, unseen branches whipped back and cut
smartly across our faces. At last we stopped again, unable to advance
another step through this tangled maze.
Somers dismounted. “Looks like we sleep out, unk,” he remarked, forced
cheerfulness in his tired tones. “We’re stuck. I wish I could lay my
hands on Roaring Lafe Rutledge!”
A deep voice answered him from the bushes. We all started violently, and
I think I cried out.
“You kin, stranger!”
CHAPTER XXVII
IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY
Somers turned slowly, and, though it was so dark, I could see that his
hands were held high. Peter and I hastened to elevate ours.
“Who are you?” he asked quietly. “What do you want?”
A gruff laugh answered him. “You done said my name, stranger. An’ what
does you-all want, an’ what fer are ye calling Roaring Lafe?”
“Doctor Major, down in the city, said you were the man to see,” replied
Somers coolly. “My name is Winters, John Winters. I’ve got consumption,
and they sent me into the mountains to live. This is my uncle, George
Winters and Mr. Scott. We want to buy land for a cabin for me, and Mr.
Scott’s going to build it.”
An incredulous grunt replied, as the bushes crackled, and a huge shape
emerged. Straining my eyes through the dark, I made out the pale blur of
a white beard, which the man stroked thoughtfully.
“Don’t yuh pay ’em no mind, Lafe,” said another voice, a shrill, ugly
voice, with a tremor in it. “Shoot ’em down! Them’s revenooers!”
“You hark, Cal Col! I aim t’ tend my bus’ness my own self. Git on them
hosses, you-all, an’ foller me. We-all’ll fetch ’em up to th’ cabin an’
look ’em over there.”
We obeyed exactly. Though Roaring Lafe had not thought it necessary even
to warn us, the repeating rifle in his hand was eloquent; and, as we
spurred after his huge figure, another man and another broke through the
laurel behind us, until we were flanked and followed by at least half a
dozen, all carrying rifles.
“In for it now!” said Peter.
“Shut up!” replied our leader.
We went on in silence, save for the creak of saddle leathers, the
stumbling footfalls of our horses; the men all about us moved like
wraiths, noiselessly. We mounted a steep grade, for I had to lean
forward to keep the saddle; then we wound through a tangle of laurel and
came out into a clearing, which seemed almost light in contrast with the
blackness below. Before us loomed the dim outlines of a big log cabin.
When we had reached it our captor said:
“Light down, you-all! Git in!”
He scorned to threaten, even to warn us, but his rifle barrel pointed
his request. We obeyed without words, ducked our heads to pass the low
lintel, and entered a bare, puncheon-floored room, with a rough stone
fireplace at one end.
I looked about it curiously, as at some remembered spot. A rude homemade
armchair stood before the fire, and on a stand beside it rested a gallon
jug. There Roaring Lafe had sat many and many a night, year after year,
talking and drinking. In that corner, perhaps, Anne Christie had
huddled, a tattered, brown-legged girl beside her mother; a half-grown
maiden, dreaming her dreams of the “settlements;” a woman full grown,
dainty and fair, recalling bitterly her free, broad life, which seemed
so hopelessly behind her, and always frightened; shivering with fear of
this hulking, ignorant, bullying brute, Lafe Rutledge.
It was very pitiful; it made her story more real, more terrible in its
quiet pathos. My eyes smarted, and I think that Somers’ thoughts must
have run in the same channel, for he faced Rutledge with a new defiance.
“Now what do you mean,” he demanded, “by stopping honest folks in this
fashion?”
Rutledge grinned, showing long, yellow teeth in his beard. “W’y, wa’n’t
you-all a-wishin’ an’ a-honin’ fer to find Roarin’ Lafe?” he asked.
“What do you-all aim to see him about? What’s yore bus’ness? Speak up,
now!”
The man called Cal Col interrupted again, his dry eyes darting hither
and thither, his lean features working hungrily.
“Kill ’em, Lafe! Kill ’em right off! Them’s revenooers, I tell ye;
hain’t no use o’ waitin’ fer ’em to lie to ye.”
Somers turned upon him fiercely enough: “You lie yourself!”
Cal Col stepped swiftly behind the bulky form of his leader. “You le’ me
be!” he whined.
The other mountaineers, rough, bearded men in homespun and cowhide
boots, laughed and nudged each other. I judged that Cal Col was not a
general favorite.
“Hush yo’r yap, boys! Hit hain’t healthy fer furriners here on Devil’s
Branch, stranger. ’F you got consumption, I shore am sorry fer hit; but
we-all cain’t have no furriners up here. Hit was a furriner done stoled
my gyurl.” The craggy, beetling brows drew down over hot eyes; Roaring
Lafe’s deep voice grew deeper, louder, more unfriendly. “You-all kin
git, right now! Hank, guide ’em out an’ onto th’ trail fer Azalea.
They-all can fetch hit, come mornin’.”
“But not to-night!” protested Somers. “Our horses are beat out.”
“Git!” repeated Rutledge sternly.
But now his men began to murmur. “Look-a-here, Lafe!” began the fellow
called Hank. “Hit hain’t safe! Mebbe they hain’t revenooers, but they
sure kin----”
Rutledge snorted. “Hain’t got sense!” he replied contemptuously. “An’
they don’t know nothin’.”
“Revenooers!” repeated Cal Col shrilly. He made a dash at Peter, the
smallest of us, and gripped his coat. “Kill ’em! A-a-a-ah!”
It was a howl of triumph. For Peter’s coat tore open under that clutch,
and on his vest shone the deputy-sheriff’s star which he had forgotten
to conceal!
The mountaineers growled ominously. “Sneaks! Spies! Revenooers!” Half a
dozen menacing rifle barrels thrust out at us.
All was lost; but we would sell our lives as dearly as we might. We
whipped out the pistols, which Rutledge’s contemptuous confidence had
left us, and stood with backs to the wall.
The door burst open, and Ralph Satterfield dashed in, panting.
“Lafe! Hank! All here? Lissen, fellers, it’s all up!” He paused in
wonder at the tableau; then a malevolent grin plucked at his piratical
mustache. “Well, dog my cats! You-all got ’em a’ready! Lissen, Lafe,
them fellers is spies! They bin watchin’ an’ doggin’ round an’ seen us
handlin’ that liquor an’ run straight t’ Raleigh las’ night to squeal!
Hull revenue bunch’ll be onto our necks directly. An’ they come up
here!” he exclaimed, with gloating malice. “Ain’t that nice, huh? Kill
’em!”
Roaring Lafe gestured the rifles aside, and beneath the shaggy brows his
eyes flamed coldly.