第24章 XIII(1)

WITH the start of a few hours and the sympathy of his people one mountaineer can defy the army of the United States;and the mountaineers usually laugh when they hear troops are coming.For the time they stop fighting and hide in the woods;and when the soldiers are gone,they come out again,and begin anew their little pleasantries.But the soldiers can protect the judge on his bench and the county-seat in time of court,and for these purposes they serve well.

The search for Rome Stetson,then,was useless.His friends would aid him;his enemies feared to betray him.So the soldiers marched away one morning,and took their prisoners for safe-keeping in the Blue Grass,until court should open at Hazlan.

Meantime,spring came and deepened-the mountain spring.The berries of the wintergreen grew scarce,and Rome Stetson,"hiding out,"as the phrase is,had to seek them on thc northem face of the mountains.The moss on the naked winter trees brightened in color,and along the river,where willows drooped,ran faint lines of green.The trailing arbutus gave out delicate pink blossoms,and the south wind blew apart the petals of the anemone.Soon violets unfolded above the dead leaves;azaleas swung their yellow trumpets through the undergrowth;over-head,the dogwood tossed its snow-flakes in gusts through the green and gold of new leaves and sunlight;and higher still waved the poplar blooms,with honey ready on every crimson heart for the bees.Down in the valley Rome Stetson could see about every little cabin pink clouds and white clouds of peach and of apple blossoms.Amid the ferns about him shade-loving trilliums showed their many-hued faces,and every opening was thickly peopled with larkspur seeking the sun.

The giant magnolia and the umbrella-tree spread their great creamy flowers;the laurel shook out myriads of pink and white bells,and the queen of mountain flowers was stirring from sleep in the buds of the rhododendron.

With the spring new forces pulsed the mountain air.The spirit of the times reached even Hazlan.A railroad was coming up the river,so the rumor was.When winter broke,surveyors had appeared;after them,mining experts and purchasers of land.New ways of bread-making were open to all,and the feudsman began to see that he could make food and clothes more easily and with less danger than by sleeping with his rifle in the woods,and by fighting men who had done him no harm.Many were tired of fighting;many,forced into the feud,had fought unwillingly.Others had sold their farms and wild lands,and were moving toward the Blue Grass or westward.The desperadoes of each faction had fled the law or were in its clutches.The last Lewallen was dead;the last Stetson was hidden away in the mountains.There were left Mareums and Braytons,but only those who felt safest from indictment;in these a spirit of hostility would live for years,and,roused by passion or by drink,would do murder now on one side of the Cumberland and now on the other;but the Stetson-Lewallen feud,old Gabe believed,was at an end at last.

All these things the miller told Rome Stetson,who well knew what they meant.He was safe enough from the law while the people took no part in his capture,but he grew apprehensive when he learned of the changes going on in the valley.None but old Gabe knew where he was,to be sure,but with his own enemies to guide the soldiers he could not hope to remain hidden long.Still,with that love of the mountains characteristic of all races born among them,he clung to his own land.He would rather stay where he was the space of a year and die,he told old Gabe passionately,than live to old age in another State.

But there was another motive,and he did not hide it.On the other side he had one enemy left-the last,too,of her race-who was more to him than his own dead kindred,who hated him,who placed at his door all her sorrows.For her he was living like a wolf in a cave,and old Gabe knew it.Her-he would not leave.

"I tell ye,Rome,you've got to go.Thar's no use talkin'.Court comes the fust Monday in June.The soldiers ull be hyeh.Hit won't be safe.Thar's some that s'picions I know whar ye air now,'n'they'll be spyin','n'mebbe hit'll git me into trouble,too,aidin''n'abettin'a man to git away who air boun'to the law."The two were sitting on the earthen floor of the cave before a little fire,and Rome,with his hands about his knees and his brows knitted,was staring into the yellow blaze.His unshorn hair fell to his shoulders;his face was pale from insufficient food and exercise,and tense with a look that was at once caged and defiant.