From the shallow porch of a house
over which brooded the dismal spirit of neglect and
shiftlessness a woman stood looking out with eyes that
should have been young, but were old with the age of
a heart and spirit gone slack.
Evidences of thrift cast overboard
bespoke the dejection that held sway there, and yet
the woman had pathetic remnants of a beauty not long
wrecked. Her hollow cheeks and lustreless hair,
the hopeless mouth with a front tooth missing, served
in their unsightliness to make one forget that the
features themselves were well modelled, and that the
thin figure needed only the filling out of sunken
curves to bring back comeliness of proportion.
The woman was twenty-two and looked
forty-five, but the small, shawl-wrapped bundle of
humanity that she held in her arms was her first child,
and two years ago she had been accounted a neighbourhood
beauty.
Under her feet the flooring of the
porch creaked its complaint of disrepair and the baby
in her arms raised a shrill and peevish howl of malnutrition.
As the mother clasped it closer and
rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and
older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced
slattern who inquired in a nasal whine:
“Kain’t ye, no fashion, gentle him ter
sleep, Sally?”
The mother shook her head despondently.
“My milk don’t seem ter
nourish him none,” she answered, and the voice
which had once been sweet carried a haunting whine
of tragedy.
Into the lawless tangle of the “laurel-hell”
that came down the mountainside to encroach upon the
meagre patch reclaimed for human habitation, a man
who had crept yard by yard to the thicket’s edge
drew back at the sight of the older woman.
This man carried a rifle which he
hitched along with him as he made his slow progress,
and his clothes were ragged from laboured travel through
rocky tangles. Small stains of blood, dried brown
on his face and hands, testified to the stinging obstruction
of thorned trailer and creeping briar, and his cheeks
were slightly hollowed because for two days he had
avoided human habitations where adequate food could
be obtained.
Now he crouched there, gazing steadfastly
at the house, and schooled his patience to keep vigil
until the mother should come out or the other woman
go away.
At least, Parish Thornton told himself,
his sister and her baby were alive.
Out of the house door slouched a year-old
hound puppy with shambling feet and lean ribs.
It stood for a moment, whining and wagging a disconsolate
tail at the woman’s feet, then came suddenly
to life and charged a razor-back hog that was rooting
at will in what should have been a potato patch.
The hog wheeled with a startled grunt
and stampeded into the thicket almost upsetting
in its headlong flight the man who was hiding there.
But the dog had stopped and stood
rigidly sniffing as human scent proclaimed itself
to his nostrils. The bristles rose erect as quills
along his neck and shoulders as a deep growl rumbled
in his throat.
That engrossment of interest and disquiet
held until the woman with the baby in her arms came
down the two steps, in curiosity, and crossed the
yard.
Then Thornton let his whisper go out
to her with an utterness of caution: “Don’t
say nothin’, Sally.... Walk back inter ther
woods ... outen sight of the house ... it’s
me ... it’s yore brother, Ken.”
For an instant she stood as tremulous
as though she had seen or heard a ghost, while in
her thin and shrunken bosom her heart pounded.
Then she said: “I’ll be thar d’reckly.
I’ll take ther baby back ter Mirandy.”
“No,” commanded the man,
“bring hit with ye. I hain’t nuver
saw hit yit.”
Parish Thornton had come safely home,
and in forest stretches where fallen leaves lay crisp
and thick under foot the razor-backs were fattening
on persimmons and mast. Along the horizon slept
an ashen mist of violet. “Sugar trees”
blazed in rustling torches of crimson and in the sweet-gums
awoke colour flashes like those which glint in a goblet
of burgundy.
Before the house in the bend of the
river the great walnut stood like a high-priest lording
it over lesser clerics: a Druid giant of blond
maturity, with outstretched arms that seemed to brush
the drifting cloud-fleece by day and the stars by
night. It whispered with the wandering voices
of the little winds in tones of hushed mystery.
Mellow now and tranquil in its day
of fruitage it had the seeming of meditation upon
the cycles of bud and leaf, sun and storm; the starkness
of death and the miracle of resurrection.
Yet the young wife searched its depths
of foliage with an eye of anxiety for, though she
had not spoken of it, her discernment recognized that
the fungus-like blight was spreading through its breadth
and height with a contagion of unhealth.
Beneath it Parish and Dorothy were
gathering and piling the walnuts that should in due
season be beaten out of their thick husks and stored
away for winter nights by the blazing hearth, and
in their veins, too, was the wine and the fragrance
of that brief carnival that comes before the desolation
of winter.
Dorothy straightened and, looking
off down the road, made sudden announcement.
“Look thar, Cal. Ef hit
hain’t a stranger ridin’ up on hoss-back.
I wonder now who is he?”
With unhurried deliberation, because
there was languor in the air that day, the man rose
from his knee, but as soon as he saw the mounted figure
his features stiffened and into them came the expression
of one who had been suddenly stricken.
Dorothy, still looking outward, with
the inquisitiveness of a land to which few strangers
come, did not see that recognition of a Nemesis, and
quickly, in order that the stranger himself might not
see it, the man drew a long breath into his chest
and schooled himself to the stoic bearing of one who
calmly accepts the inevitable.
By that time the horseman had halted
and nodded. He dismounted and threw his rein
over a picket, then from the stile he accosted Thornton:
“Ken, I reckon ye knows me,” he said,
“an’ I reckon ye knows what brought me.”
Parish went forward, but before he
reached the stile he turned and in a level voice said,
“Dorothy, this hyar man’s Jake Beaver.
He’s ther high-sheriff from over
in Virginny ... I reckon he seeks ter take me
back.”
Dorothy stood with all her pliant
sinews inordinately tensed; with her deep eyes wide
and terrified, yet voiceless of any outburst or exclamation,
and near her, ill at ease, but seeking to treat the
affair as an inescapable matter of business, and consequently
a commonplace, the sheriff shifted his weight from
foot to foot, and fanned himself with his hat.
The exact wording of the warrant was
after all of no particular consequence. The announcement
of its purport had carried all its necessary significance.
Yet, before he spoke again, Kenneth Thornton, also
known as Parish Thornton and as Cal Maggard these
names being included in the document as aliases read
it from preamble to signature and seal at the end.
Then he inquired: “How
come ye ter diskiver wh’ar I was at, Jake?”
The officer shook his head. “Thet’s
a question I hain’t got ther power ter answer
ye, Ken. Somebody over thar got tidin’s
somehow and drapped a hint ter ther Commonwealth’s
Attorney.”
With a nod of comprehension the man
who was wanted accepted that explanation. He
had not expected a fuller one.
Then, turning, he complied with the
demands of courtesy. “Dorothy,” he
asked, “hain’t ye goin’ ter invite
Jake ter come in an’ eat him some dinner?”
The woman had not spoken. For
her, stoic-bred though she was, it was impossible
to separate calmly the personal side of this stranger
from the abstract and menacing thing for which he
stood. Now she gulped down a hot and inhospitable
impulse of refusal and said briefly to her husband,
“You kin invite him ef ye’ve a mind
ter, Cal. I won’t.”
The officer flushed in embarrassment.
Sheriffs, like bloodhounds, are frequently endowed
with gentle natures, and this mission was not of Beaver’s
own choosing. It was a pursuit he followed with
nothing of the sportsman’s zest.
“I reckon I moût es
well git over an’ done with all ther onpleasant
jobs I’ve got on hand,” he announced,
awkwardly, “air ye willin’ ter waive extradition,
Ken, or does ye aim ter fight goin’ back?
Hit’s jest a matter of time either way but
ye’ve got the privilege of choosin’.”
The man he had come after was carefully
folding the warrant of arrest along its folded lines
as though it were important to preserve the exact
creasing of the paper.
“Does I keep this hyar thing,
Jake,” he asked, “or give hit back to ye?”
“Keep hit,” replied the
sheriff, with an equal gravity. “Hit b’longs
ter you.”
There was a brief silence after that then Thornton
said:
“This is a right grave matter
ter me, Jake. Afore I decides what ter do I’ve
got ter hev speech with some of my neighbours.”
The foreign official inclined his head.
“I hain’t drapped no hint
ter no man es ter what business brought me hyar,”
he volunteered. “I ’lowed ter talk
with ye in private fust. I knows full well I’m
amongst yore friends over hyar an’
I’ve got ter trust myself in yore hands.
This hain’t no welcome task, Ken, any way ye
looks at hit.”
“I gives ye my hand, Jake,”
the accused reassured his accuser, “no harm
hain’t goin’ ter come ter ye. Come
on indoors and sot ye a cheer.”
Parish Thornton stood under the black
walnut again that afternoon and with his jackknife
he was carving a small basket out of one of the walnuts
that had fallen at his feet. About him stood a
group including the custodian of “the peace
and dignity of the Commonwealth of Virginia”
and the man who held like responsibility for the state
of Kentucky.
Between the two, unexpressed but felt,
lay the veiled hostility that had grown up through
generations of “crossing the border” to
hide out; the hostility of conflicting jurisdictions.
Hump Doane and Jim Rowlett were there,
and Aaron Capper and Lincoln Thornton a
handful who could speak with the voice of public opinion
thereabouts, and while he carved industriously at his
watch-charm basket, Parish Thornton glanced at the
cripple.
“Mr. Doane,” he said,
“once, standin’ on this identical spot,
ye asked me a question thet I refused ter answer.
This man hes come over hyar, now, ter answer
hit fer me. Jake, tell these folks what brought
ye hither.”
The sheriff cleared his throat and
by way of preface remarked: “I didn’t
come of my own choosin’, gentlemen. Ther
state of Virginny accuses Parish Thornton of ther
wilful murder of John Turk. I’m high-sheriff
over in Lee County whar hit tuck place.”
A grave restraint prevented any expression
of surprise, but all the eyes were turned upon Thornton
himself, and the accused gave back even glance for
even glance.
“Now I’m goin’ ter
give ye my side of hit,” he began, though to
give his side in full justice he would have had to
reveal a secret which he had no intent of disclosing.
“My sister, Sally, married John
Turk an’ he abused her till she couldn’t
endure hit no longer. Her pride was mighty high
an’ she’d hev cut her tongue out afore
she’d hev told her neighbours ther way she war
misused but I knowed hit.” As
he paused his eyes darkened into sombre memory.
“I reasoned with John an’ he blackguarded
me, too, an’ ferbid me ter darken his door....
Deespite thet command I feared fer her life an’
I fared over thar ... I went in at ther door an’
he war a-maltreatin’ her an’ chokin’
her. I railed out ... an’ he hurt her wusser
... hit war his life or her’n. Ef hit war
all ter do over ergin I wouldn’t act no different.”
He paused again and no one offered a comment; so he
resumed his statement: “I hain’t
told ye all of hit, but I reckon thet’s enough.
Thar warn’t no witnesses ter holp me come cl’ar
an’ ther co’te over thar wouldn’t
vouchsafe me no justice.... Hit’s jedge
b’longed ter John Turk’s kinfolks body
an’ soul ... so I come away.”
“I reckon ye’d be plum
daft ef ye didn’t stay away,” remarked
the Kentucky sheriff with a sharp and bellicose glance
at his colleague from another state. “Virginny
officers hain’t got no power of arrest in Kaintuck.”
The Virginian bit a trifle nervously
from a twist of “natural leaf.”
“Hit’s my bounden duty,
though,” he declared, staunchly, “ter call
on you ter arrest him an’ hold him till
I gits me them extradition papers from Frankfort an’
then hit’s yore bounden duty ter fotch
him ter ther state line an’ deliver him over
ter me.”
“I’m ther man thet decides
what my duty is,” came the swift retort, and
Thornton raised a hand to quell incipient argument.
“Thet hain’t ther p’int,
men,” he reminded them. “Ther law
kin reach in an’ take me out finally. We
all knows thet onless I forsook my home
hyar an’ lived a refugee, hidin’ out.
Atter they once diskivered whar I was, I moût
jest es well be thar es hyar.”
“Ther boy’s right,”
ruled Hump Doane, judicially. “A man kain’t
beat ther law in ther long run.” Then the
cripple wheeled on the sheriff.
“Mr. Beaver,” he said,
“we hain’t got no quarrel with ye fer
doin’ yore plain duty, but whether ye calls
this man a criminal over thar in Virginny or not we
knows over hyar thet he’s a godly upholder of
ther law an’ we don’t aim ter
see him made no scape-goat fer unlawful wrath
ef we kin hinder hit. In so fur es we
kin legally compass hit we stands ready ter fight
ther state of Virginny from hell ter breakfast.
All he’s got ter do is jest give us ther word.”
“I hain’t seekin’
ter contrary ye none es ter thet, Mr. Doane,”
the officer gave ready assurance.
“Ef Mr. Thornton takes my counsel,”
went on the deformed leader, “he’ll bid
ye go back thar an’ tell them folks ye comes
from thet ef they’ll admit him ter bail, an’
pledge him a fa’r day in co’te, he’ll
come back thar without no conflict when ye sends fer
him. But ye’ve got ter hev ’em agree
ter let him stay over hyar till ther co’te sets
ter try him. Es fer his bond ye kin
put hit at any figger ye likes so long es thar’s
land enough an’ money enough amongst us ter kiver
hit.”
The Virginia sheriff turned to the Kentucky officer.
“Will ye arrest this man an’
hold him safe till I gits my order?” he demanded,
and the Kentuckian in turn inquired of Parish, “Will
ye agree to hold yoreself subject ter prompt response?”
Thornton nodded and casually the local officer replied:
“All right, Mr. Beaver.
Ye kin ride on home now whenever ye gits ready.
I’ve got this prisoner in a custody thet satisfies
me right now.”