The pioneer was not the only man in the great mountains behind Virginia. Strange aliens drifted in after the Colonial wars. All foreign armies are sprinkled with a cockle of adventurers that take root and remain. They were with Braddock and La Salle, and they rode north out of Mexico after her many empires went to pieces.
I think Doomdorf crossed the seas with Iturbide when that ill-starred adventurer returned to be shot against a wall; but there was no Southern blood in him. He came from some European race remote and barbaric. The evidences were all about him. He was a huge figure of a man, with a black spade beard, broad, thick hands, and square, flat fingers.
He had found a wedge of land between the Crown's grant to Daniel Davisson and a Washington survey. It was an uncovered triangle not worth the running of the lines; and so, no doubt, was left out, a sheer rock standing up out of the river for a base, and a peak of the mountain rising northward behind it for an apex.
Doomdorf squatted on the rock. He must have brought a belt of gold pieces when he took to his horse, for he hired old Robert Steuart's slaves and built a stone house on the rock, and he brought the furnishings overland from a frigate in the Chesapeake; and then in the handfuls of earth, wherever a root would hold, he planted the mountain behind his house with peach trees. The gold gave out; but the devil is fertile in resources. Doomdorf built a log still and turned the first fruits of the garden into a hell-brew. The idle and the vicious came with their stone jugs, and violence and riot flowed out.
The government of Virginia was remote and its arm short and feeble; but the men who held the lands west of the mountains against the savages under grants from George, and after that held them against George himself, were efficient and expeditious. They had long patience, but when that failed they went up from their fields and drove the thing before them out of the land, like a scourge of God.
There came a day, then, when my Uncle Abner and Squire Randolph rode through the gap of the mountains to have the thing out with Doomdorf. The work of this brew, which had the odors of Eden and the impulses of the devil in it, could be borne no longer. The drunken negroes had shot old Duncan's cattle and burned his haystacks, and the land was on its feet.
They rode alone, but they were worth an army of little men. Randolph was vain and pompous and given over to extravagance of words, but he was a gentleman beneath it, and fear was an alien and a stranger to him. And Abner was the right hand of the land.
It was a day in early summer and the sun lay hot. They crossed through the broken spine of the mountains and trailed along the river in the shade of the great chestnut trees. The road was only a path and the horses went one before the other. It left the river when the rock began to rise and, making a detour through the grove of peach trees, reached the house on the mountain side. Randolph and Abner got down, unsaddled their horses and turned them out to graze, for their business with Doomdorf would not be over in an hour. Then they took a steep path that brought them out on the mountain side of the house.
A man sat on a big red-roan horse in the paved court before the door. He was a gaunt old man. He sat bare-headed, the palms of his hands resting on the pommel of his saddle, his chin sunk in his black stock, his face in retrospection, the wind moving gently his great shock of voluminous white hair. Under him the huge red horse stood with his legs spread out like a horse of stone.
There was no sound. The door to the house was closed; insects moved in the sun; a shadow crept out from the motionless figure, and swarms of yellow butterflies maneuvered like an army.
Abner and Randolph stopped. They knew the tragic figure—a circuit rider of the hills who preached the invective of Isaiah as though he were the mouthpiece of a militant and avenging overlord; as though the government of Virginia were the awful theocracy of the Book of Kings. The horse was dripping with sweat and the man bore the dust and the evidences of a journey on him.
"Bronson," said Abner, "where is Doomdorf?"
The old man lifted his head and looked down at Abner over the pommel of the saddle.
"'Surely,'" he said, "'he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.'"
Abner went over and knocked on the closed door, and presently the white, frightened face of a woman looked out at him. She was a little, faded woman, with fair hair, a broad foreign face, but with the delicate evidences of gentle blood.
Abner repeated his question.
"Where is Doomdorf?"
"Oh, sir," she answered with a queer lisping accent, "he went to lie down in his south room after his midday meal, as his custom is; and I went to the orchard to gather any fruit that might be ripened." She hesitated and her voice lisped into a whisper: "He is not come out and I cannot wake him."
The two men followed her through the hall and up the stairway to the door.
"It is always bolted," she said, "when he goes to lie down." And she knocked feebly with the tips of her fingers.
There was no answer and Randolph rattled the doorknob.
"Come out, Doomdorf!" he called in his big, bellowing voice.
There was only silence and the echoes of the words among the rafters. Then Randolph set his shoulder to the door and burst it open.
They went in. The room was flooded with sun from the tall south windows. Doomdorf lay on a couch in a little offset of the room, a great scarlet patch on his bosom and a pool of scarlet on the floor.
The woman stood for a moment staring; then she cried out:
"At last I have killed him!" And she ran like a frightened hare.
The two men closed the door and went over to the couch. Doomdorf had been shot to death. There was a great ragged hole in his waistcoat. They began to look about for the weapon with which the deed had been accomplished, and in a moment found it—a fowling piece lying in two dogwood forks against the wall. The gun had just been fired; there was a freshly exploded paper cap under the hammer.
There was little else in the room—a loom-woven rag carpet on the floor; wooden shutters flung back from the windows; a great oak table, and on it a big, round, glass water bottle, filled to its glass stopper with raw liquor from the still. The stuff was limpid and clear as spring water; and, but for its pungent odor, one would have taken it for God's brew instead of Doomdorf's. The sun lay on it and against the wall where hung the weapon that had ejected the dead man out of life.
"Abner," said Randolf, "this is murder! The woman took that gun down from the wall and shot Doomdorf while he slept."
Abner was standing by the table, his fingers round his chin.
"Randolph," he replied, "what brought Bronson here?"
"The same outrages that brought us," said Randolph. "The mad old circuit rider has been preaching a crusade against Doomdorf far and wide in the hills."
Abner answered, without taking his fingers from about his chin:
"You think this woman killed Doomdorf? Well, let us go and ask Bronson who killed him."
They closed the door, leaving the dead man on his couch, and went down into the court.
The old circuit rider had put away his horse and got an ax. He had taken off his coat and pushed his shirtsleeves up over his long elbows. He was on his way to the still to destroy the barrels of liquor. He stopped when the two men came out, and Abner called to him.
"Bronson," he said, "who killed Doomdorf?"
"I killed him," replied the old man, and went on toward the still.
Randolph swore under his breath. "By the Almighty," he said, "everybody couldn't kill him!"
"Who can tell how many had a hand in it?" replied Abner.
"Two have confessed!" cried Randolph. "Was there perhaps a third? Did you kill him, Abner? And I too? Man, the thing is impossible!"
"The impossible," replied Abner, "looks here like the truth. Come with me, Randolph, and I will show you a thing more impossible than this."
They returned through the house and up the stairs to the room. Abner closed the door behind them.
"Look at this bolt," he said; "it is on the inside and not connected with the lock. How did the one who killed Doomdorf get into this room, since the door was bolted?"
"Through the windows," replied Randolph.
There were but two windows, facing the south, through which the sun entered. Abner led Randolph to them.
"Look!" he said. "The wall of the house is plumb with the sheer face of the rock. It is a hundred feet to the river and the rock is as smooth as a sheet of glass. But that is not all. Look at these window frames; they are cemented into their casement with dust and they are bound along their edges with cobwebs. These windows have not been opened. How did the assassin enter?"
"The answer is evident," said Randolph: "The one who killed Doomdorf hid in the room until he was asleep; then he shot him and went out."
"The explanation is excellent but for one thing," replied Abner: "How did the assassin bolt the door behind him on the inside of this room after he had gone out?"
Randolph flung out his arms with a hopeless gesture.
"Who knows?" he cried. "Maybe Doomdorf killed himself."
Abner laughed.
"And after firing a handful of shot into his heart he got up and put the gun back carefully into the forks against the wall!"
"Well," cried Randolph, "there is one open road out of this mystery. Bronson and this woman say they killed Doomdorf, and if they killed him they surely know how they did it. Let us go down and ask them."
"In the law court," replied Abner, "that procedure would be considered sound sense; but we are in God's court and things are managed there in a somewhat stranger way. Before we go let us find out, if we can, at what hour it was that Doomdorf died."
He went over and took a big silver watch out of the dead man's pocket. It was broken by a shot and the hands lay at one hour after noon. He stood for a moment fingering his chin.
"At one o'clock," he said. "Bronson, I think, was on the road to this place, and the woman was on the mountain among the peach trees."
Randolph threw back his shoulders.
"Why waste time in a speculation about it, Abner?" he said. "We know who did this thing. Let us go and get the story of it out of their own mouths. Doomdorf died by the hands of either Bronson or this woman."
"I could better believe it," replied Abner, "but for the running of a certain awful law."
"What law?" said Randolph. "Is it a statute of Virginia?"
"It is a statute," replied Abner, "of an authority somewhat higher. Mark the language of it: 'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.'"
He came over and took Randolph by the arm.
"Must! Randolph, did you mark particularly the word 'must'? It is a mandatory law. There is no room in it for the vicissitudes of chance or fortune. There is no way round that word. Thus, we reap what we sow and nothing else; thus, we receive what we give and nothing else. It is the weapon in our own hands that finally destroys us. You are looking at it now." And he turned him about so that the table and the weapon and the dead man were before him. "'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.' And now," he said, "let us go and try the method of the law courts. Your faith is in the wisdom of their ways."
They found the old circuit rider at work in the still, staving in Doomdorf's liquor casks, splitting the oak heads with his ax.
"Bronson," said Randolph, "how did you kill Doomdorf?"
The old man stopped and stood leaning on his ax.
"I killed him," replied the old man, "as Elijah killed the captains of Ahaziah and their fifties. But not by the hand of any man did I pray the Lord God to destroy Doomdorf, but with fire from heaven to destroy him."
He stood up and extended his arms.
"His hands were full of blood," he said. "With his abomination from these groves of Baal he stirred up the people to contention, to strife and murder. The widow and the orphan cried to heaven against him. 'I will surely hear their cry,' is the promise written in the Book. The land was weary of him; and I prayed the Lord God to destroy him with fire from heaven, as he destroyed the Princes of Gomorrah in their palaces!"
Randolph made a gesture as of one who dismisses the impossible, but Abner's face took on a deep, strange look.
"With fire from heaven!" he repeated slowly to himself. Then he asked a question. "A little while ago," he said, "when we came, I asked you where Doomdorf was, and you answered me in the language of the third chapter of the Book of Judges. Why did you answer me like that, Bronson?—'Surely he covereth his feet in his summer chamber.'"
"The woman told me that he had not come down from the room where he had gone up to sleep," replied the old man, "and that the door was locked. And then I knew that he was dead in his summer chamber like Eglon, King of Moab."
He extended his arm toward the south.
"I came here from the Great Valley," he said, "to cut down these groves of Baal and to empty out this abomination; but I did not know that the Lord had heard my prayer and visited His wrath on Doomdorf until I was come up into these mountains to his door. When the woman spoke I knew it." And he went away to his horse, leaving the ax among the ruined barrels.
Randolph interrupted.
"Come, Abner," he said; "this is wasted time. Bronson did not kill Doomdorf."
Abner answered slowly in his deep, level voice:
"Do you realize, Randolph, how Doomdorf died?"
"Not by fire from heaven, at any rate," said Randolph.
"Randolph," replied Abner, "are you sure?"
"Abner," cried Randolph, "you are pleased to jest, but I am in deadly earnest. A crime has been done here against the state. I am an officer of justice and I propose to discover the assassin if I can."
He walked away toward the house and Abner followed, his hands behind him and his great shoulders thrown loosely forward, with a grim smile about his mouth.
"It is no use to talk with the mad old preacher," Randolph went on. "Let him empty out the liquor and ride away. I won't issue a warrant against him. Prayer may be a handy implement to do a murder with, Abner, but it is not a deadly weapon under the statutes of Virginia. Doomdorf was dead when old Bronson got here with his Scriptural jargon. This woman killed Doomdorf. I shall put her to an inquisition."
"As you like," replied Abner. "Your faith remains in the methods of the law courts."
"Do you know of any better methods?" said Randolph.
"Perhaps," replied Abner, "when you have finished."
Night had entered the valley. The two men went into the house and set about preparing the corpse for burial. They got candles, and made a coffin, and put Doomdorf in it, and straightened out his limbs, and folded his arms across his shot-out heart. Then they set the coffin on benches in the hall.
They kindled a fire in the dining room and sat down before it, with the door open and the red firelight shining through on the dead man's narrow, everlasting house. The woman had put some cold meat, a golden cheese and a loaf on the table. They did not see her, but they heard her moving about the house; and finally, on the gravel court outside, her step and the whinny of a horse. Then she came in, dressed as for a journey. Randolph sprang up.
"Where are you going?" he said.
"To the sea and a ship," replied the woman. Then she indicated the hall with a gesture. "He is dead and I am free."
There was a sudden illumination in her face. Randolph took a step toward her. His voice was big and harsh.
"Who killed Doomdorf?" he cried.
"I killed him," replied the woman. "It was fair!"
"Fair!" echoed the justice. "What do you mean by that?"
The woman shrugged her shoulders and put out her hands with a foreign gesture.
"I remember an old, old man sitting against a sunny wall, and a little girl, and one who came and talked a long time with the old man, while the little girl plucked yellow flowers out of the grass and put them into her hair. Then finally the stranger gave the old man a gold chain and took the little girl away." She flung out her hands. "Oh, it was fair to kill him!" She looked up with a queer, pathetic smile.
"The old man will be gone by now," she said; "but I shall perhaps find the wall there, with the sun on it, and the yellow flowers in the grass. And now, may I go?"
It is a law of the story-teller's art that he does not tell a story. It is the listener who tells it. The story-teller does but provide him with the stimuli.
Randolph got up and walked about the floor. He was a justice of the peace in a day when that office was filled only by the landed gentry, after the English fashion; and the obligations of the law were strong on him. If he should take liberties with the letter of it, how could the weak and the evil be made to hold it in respect? Here was this woman before him a confessed assassin. Could he let her go?
Abner sat unmoving by the hearth, his elbow on the arm of his chair, his palm propping up his jaw, his face clouded in deep lines. Randolph was consumed with vanity and the weakness of ostentation, but he shouldered his duties for himself. Presently he stopped and looked at the woman, wan, faded like some prisoner of legend escaped out of fabled dungeons into the sun.
The firelight flickered past her to the box on the benches in the hall, and the vast, inscrutable justice of heaven entered and overcame him.
"Yes," he said. "Go! There is no jury in Virginia that would hold a woman for shooting a beast like that." And he thrust out his arm, with the fingers extended toward the dead man.
The woman made a little awkward curtsy.
"I thank you, sir." Then she hesitated and lisped, "But I have not shoot him."
"Not shoot him!" cried Randolph. "Why, the man's heart is riddled!"
"Yes, sir," she said simply, like a child. "I kill him, but have not shoot him."
Randolph took two long strides toward the woman.
"Not shoot him!" he repeated. "How then, in the name of heaven, did you kill Doomdorf?" And his big voice filled the empty places of the room.
"I will show you, sir," she said.
She turned and went away into the house. Presently she returned with something folded up in a linen towel. She put it on the table between the loaf of bread and the yellow cheese.
Randolph stood over the table, and the woman's deft fingers undid the towel from round its deadly contents; and presently the thing lay there uncovered.
It was a little crude model of a human figure done in wax with a needle thrust through the bosom.
Randolph stood up with a great intake of the breath.
"Magic! By the eternal!"
"Yes, sir," the woman explained, in her voice and manner of a child. "I have try to kill him many times—oh, very many times!—with witch words which I have remember; but always they fail. Then, at last, I make him in wax, and I put a needle through his heart; and I kill him very quickly."
It was as clear as daylight, even to Randolph, that the woman was innocent. Her little harmless magic was the pathetic effort of a child to kill a dragon. He hesitated a moment before he spoke, and then he decided like the gentleman he was. If it helped the child to believe that her enchanted straw had slain the monster—well, he would let her believe it.
"And now, sir, may I go?"
Randolph looked at the woman in a sort of wonder.
"Are you not afraid," he said, "of the night and the mountains, and the long road?"
"Oh no, sir," she replied simply. "The good God will be everywhere now."
It was an awful commentary on the dead man—that this strange half-child believed that all the evil in the world had gone out with him; that now that he was dead, the sunlight of heaven would fill every nook and corner.
It was not a faith that either of the two men wished to shatter, and they let her go. It would be daylight presently and the road through the mountains to the Chesapeake was open.
Randolph came back to the fireside after he had helped her into the saddle, and sat down. He tapped on the hearth for some time idly with the iron poker; and then finally he spoke.
"This is the strangest thing that ever happened," he said. "Here's a mad old preacher who thinks that he killed Doomdorf with fire from Heaven, like Elijah the Tishbite; and here is a simple child of a woman who thinks she killed him with a piece of magic of the Middle Ages—each as innocent of his death as I am. And yet, by the eternal, the beast is dead!"
He drummed on the hearth with the poker, lifting it up and letting it drop through the hollow of his fingers.
"Somebody shot Doomdorf. But who? And how did he get into and out of that shut-up room? The assassin that killed Doomdorf must have gotten into the room to kill him. Now, how did he get in?" He spoke as to himself; but my uncle sitting across the hearth replied:
"Through the window."
"Through the window!" echoed Randolph. "Why, man, you yourself showed me that the window had not been opened, and the precipice below it a fly could hardly climb. Do you tell me now that the window was opened?"
"No," said Abner, "it was never opened."
Randolph got on his feet.
"Abner," he cried, "are you saying that the one who killed Doomdorf climbed the sheer wall and got in through a closed window, without disturbing the dust or the cobwebs on the window frame?"
My uncle looked Randolph in the face.
"The murderer of Doomdorf did even more," he said. "That assassin not only climbed the face of that precipice and got in through the closed window, but he shot Doomdorf to death and got out again through the closed window without leaving a single track or trace behind, and without disturbing a grain of dust or a thread of a cobweb."
Randolph swore a great oath.
"The thing is impossible!" he cried. "Men are not killed today in Virginia by black art or a curse of God."
"By black art, no," replied Abner; "but by the curse of God, yes. I think they are."
Randolph drove his clenched right hand into the palm of his left.
"By the eternal!" he cried. "I would like to see the assassin who could do a murder like this, whether he be an imp from the pit or an angel out of Heaven."
"Very well," replied Abner, undisturbed. "When he comes back tomorrow I will show you the assassin who killed Doomdorf."
When day broke they dug a grave and buried the dead man against the mountain among his peach trees. It was noon when that work was ended. Abner threw down his spade and looked up at the sun.
"Randolph," he said, "let us go and lay an ambush for this assassin. He is on the way here."
And it was a strange ambush that he laid. When they were come again into the chamber where Doomdorf died he bolted the door; then he loaded the fowling piece and put it carefully back on its rack against the wall. After that he did another curious thing: He took the blood-stained coat, which they had stripped off the dead man when they had prepared his body for the earth, put a pillow in it and laid it on the couch precisely where Doomdorf had slept. And while he did these things Randolph stood in wonder and Abner talked:
"Look you, Randolph. … We will trick the murderer. … We will catch him in the act."
Then he went over and took the puzzled justice by the arm.
"Watch!" he said. "The assassin is coming along the wall!"
But Randolph heard nothing, saw nothing. Only the sun entered. Abner's hand tightened on his arm.
"It is here! Look!" And he pointed to the wall.
Randolph, following the extended finger, saw a tiny brilliant disk of light moving slowly up the wall toward the lock of the fowling piece. Abner's hand became a vise and his voice rang as over metal.
"'He that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.' It is the water bottle, full of Doomdorf's liquor, focusing the sun. … And look, Randolph, how Bronson's prayer was answered!"
The tiny disk of light traveled on the plate of the lock.
"It is fire from heaven!"
The words rang above the roar of the fowling piece, and Randolph saw the dead man's coat leap up on the couch, riddled by the shot. The gun, in its natural position on the rack, pointed to the couch standing at the end of the chamber, beyond the offset of the wall, and the focused sun had exploded the percussion cap.
Randolph made a great gesture, with his arm extended.
"It is a world," he said, "filled with the mysterious joinder of accident!"
"It is a world," replied Abner, "filled with the mysterious justice of God!"
Abner never would have taken me into that house if he could have helped it. He was on a desperate mission and a child was the last company he wished; but he had to do it. It was an evening of early winter—raw and cold. A chilling rain was beginning to fall; night was descending and I could not go on. I had been into the upcountry and had taken this short cut through the hills that lay here against the mountains. I would have been home by now, but a broken shoe had delayed me.
I did not see Abner's horse until I approached the crossroads, but I think he had seen me from a distance. His great chestnut stood in the grassplot between the roads, and Abner sat upon him like a man of stone. He had made his decision when I got to him.
The very aspect of the land was sinister. The house stood on a hill; round its base, through the sodded meadows, the river ran—dark, swift and silent; stretching westward was a forest and for background the great mountains stood into the sky. The house was very old. The high windows were of little panes of glass and on the ancient white door the paint was seamed and cracked with age.
The name of the man who lived here was a byword in the hills. He was a hunchback, who sat his great roan as though he were a spider in the saddle. He had been married more than once; but one wife had gone mad, and my Uncle Abner's drovers had found the other on a summer morning swinging to the limb of a great elm that stood before the door, a bridle-rein knotted around her throat and her bare feet scattering the yellow pollen of the ragweed. That elm was to us a duletree. One could not ride beneath it for the swinging of this ghost.
The estate, undivided, belonged to Gaul and his brother. This brother lived beyond the moutains. He never came until he came that last time. Gaul rendered some accounting and they managed in that way. It was said the brother believed himself defrauded and had come finally to divide the lands; but this was gossip. Gaul said his brother came upon a visit and out of love for him.
One did not know where the truth lay between these stories. Why he came we could not be certain; but why he remained was beyond a doubt.
One morning Gaul came to my Uncle Abner, clinging to the pommel of his saddle while his great horse galloped, to say that he had found his brother dead, and asking Abner to go with some others and look upon the man before one touched his body—and then to get him buried.
The hunchback sniveled and cried out that his nerves were gone with grief and the terror of finding his brother's throat cut open and the blood upon him as he lay ghastly in his bed. He did not know a detail. He had looked in at the door—and fled. His brother had not got up and he had gone to call him. Why his brother had done this thing he could not imagine—he was in perfect health and he slept beneath his roof in love. The hunchback had blinked his red-lidded eyes and twisted his big, hairy hands, and presented the aspect of grief. It looked grotesque and loathsome; but—how else could a toad look in his extremity?
Abner had gone with my father and Elnathan Stone. They had found the man as Gaul said—the razor by his hand and the marks of his fingers and his struggle on him and about the bed. And the country had gone to see him buried. The hills had been afire with talk, but Abner and my father and Elnathan Stone were silent. They came silent from Gaul's house; they stood silent before the body when it was laid out for burial; and, bareheaded, they were silent when the earth received it.
A little later, however, when Gaul brought forth a will, leaving the brother's share of the estate to the hunchback, with certain loving words, and a mean allowance to the man's children, the three had met together and Abner had walked about all night.
As we turned in toward the house Abner asked me if I had got my supper. I told him "Yes"; and at the ford he stopped and sat a moment in the saddle.
"Martin," he said, "get down and drink. It is God's river and the water clean in it."
Then he extended his great arm toward the shadowy house.
"We shall go in," he said; "but we shall not eat nor drink there, for we do not come in peace."
I do not know much about that house, for I saw only one room in it; that was empty, cluttered with dust and rubbish, and preëmpted by the spider. Long double windows of little panes of glass looked out over the dark, silent river slipping past without a sound, and the rain driving into the forest and the loom of the mountains. There was a fire—the trunk of an apple tree burning, with one end in the fireplace. There were some old chairs with black hair-cloth seats, and a sofa—all very old. These the hunchback did not sit on, for the dust appeared when they were touched. He had a chair beside the hearth, and he sat in that—a high-backed chair, made like a settee and padded—the arms padded too; but there the padding was worn out and ragged, where his hands had plucked it.
He wore a blue coat, made with little capes to hide his hump, and he sat tapping the burning tree with his cane. There was a gold piece set into the head of this black stick. He had it put there, the gossips said, that his fingers might be always on the thing he loved. His gray hair lay along his face and the draft of the chimney moved it.
He wondered why we came, and his eyes declared how the thing disturbed him; they flared up and burned down—now gleaming in his head as he looked us over, and now dull as he considered what he saw.
The man was misshapen and doubled up, but there was strength and vigor in him. He had a great, cavernous mouth, and his voice was a sort of bellow. One has seen an oak tree, dwarfed and stunted into knots, but with the toughness and vigor of a great oak in it. Gaul was a thing like that.
He cried out when he saw Abner. He was taken by surprise; and he wished to know if we came by chance or upon some errand.
"Abner," he said, "come in. It's a devil's night—rain and the driving wind."
"The weather," said Abner, "is in God's hand."
"God!" cried Gaul. "I would shoestrap[1] such a God! The autumn is not half over and here is winter come, and no pasture left and the cattle to be fed."
Then he saw me, with my scared white face—and he was certain that we came by chance. He craned his thick neck and looked.
"Bub," he said, "come in and warm your fingers. I will not hurt you. I did not twist my body up like this to frighten children—it was Abner's God."
We entered and sat down by the fire. The apple tree blazed and crackled; the wind outside increased; the rain turned to a kind of sleet that rattled on the window-glass like shot. The room was lighted by two candles in tall brass candlesticks. They stood at each end of the mantelpiece, smeared with tallow. The wind whopped and spat into the chimney; and now and then a puff of wood-smoke blew out and mounted up along the blackened fireboard.
Abner and the hunchback talked of the price of cattle, of the "blackleg" among yearlings—that fatal disease that we had so much trouble with—and of the "lump-jaw."
Gaul said that if calves were kept in small lots and not all together the "blackleg" was not so apt to strike them; and he thought the "lump-jaw" was a germ. Fatten the bullock with green corn and put it in a car, he said, when the lump begins to come. The Dutch would eat it—and what poison could hurt the Dutch! But Abner said the creature should be shot.
"And lose the purchase money and a summer's grazing?" cried Gaul. "Not I! I ship the beast."
"Then," said Abner, "the inspector in the market ought to have it shot and you fined to boot."
"The inspector in the market!" And Gaul laughed. "Why, I slip him a greenback—thus!"—and he set his thumb against his palm. "And he is glad to see me. 'Gaul, bring in all you can,' said one; 'it means a little something to us both.'" And the hunchback's laugh clucked and chuckled in his throat.
And they talked of renters, and men to harvest the hay and feed the cattle in the winter. And on this topic Gaul did not laugh; he cursed. Labor was a lost art and the breed of men run out. This new set were worthless—they had hours—and his oaths filled all the rafters. Hours! Why, under his father men worked from dawn until dark and cleaned their horses by a lantern. … These were decadent times that we were come on. In the good days one bought a man for two hundred eagles; but now the creature was a citizen and voted at the polls—and could not be kicked. And if one took his cane and drubbed him he was straightway sued at law, in an action of trespass on the case, for damages. … Men had gone mad with these newfangled notions, and the earth was likely to grow up with weeds!
Abner said there was a certain truth in this—and that truth was that men were idler than their fathers. Certain preachers preached that labor was a curse and backed it up with Scripture; but he had read the Scriptures for himself and the curse was idleness. Labor and God's Book would save the world; they were two wings that a man could get his soul to Heaven on.
"They can all go to hell, for me," said Gaul, "and so I have my day's work first."
And he tapped the tree with his great stick and cried out that his workhands robbed him. He had to sit his horse and watch or they hung their scythes up; and he must put sulphur in his cattle's meal or they stole it from him; and they milked his cows to feed their scurvy babies. He would have their hides off if it were not for these tender laws.
Abner said that, while one saw to his day's work done, he must see to something more; that a man was his brother's keeper in spite of Cain's denial—and he must keep him; that the elder had his right to the day's work, but the younger had also his right to the benefits of his brother's guardianship. The fiduciary had One to settle with. It would go hard if he should shirk the trust.
"I do not recognize your trust," said Gaul. "I live here for myself."
"For yourself!" cried Abner. "And would you know what God thinks of you?"
"And would you know what I think of God?" cried Gaul.
"What do you think of Him?" said Abner.
"I think He's a scarecrow," said Gaul. "And I think, Abner, that I am a wiser bird than you are. I have not sat cawing in a tree, afraid of this thing. I have seen its wooden spine under its patched jacket, and the crosspiece peeping from the sleeves, and its dangling legs. And I have gone down into its field and taken what I liked in spite of its flapping coat-tails. … Why, Abner, this thing your God depends on is a thing called fear; and I do not have it."
Abner looked at him hard, but he did not answer. He turned, instead, to me.
"Martin," he said, "you must go to sleep, lad." And he wrapped me in his greatcoat and put me to bed on the sofa—behind him in the corner. I was snug and warm there and I could have slept like Saul, but I was curious to know what Abner came for and I peeped out through a buttonhole of the greatcoat.
Abner sat for a long time, his elbows on his knees, his hands together and his eyes looking into the fire. The hunchback watched him, his big, hairy hands moving on the padded arms of his chair and his sharp eyes twinkling like specks of glass. Finally Abner spoke—I judged he believed me now asleep.
"And so, Gaul," he said, "you think God is a scarecrow?"
"I do," said Gaul.
"And you have taken what you liked?"
"I have," said Gaul.
"Well," said Abner, "I have come to ask you to return what you have taken—and something besides, for usury."
He got a folded paper out of his pocket and handed it across the hearth to Gaul.
The hunchback took it, leaned back in his chair, unfolded it at his leisure and at his leisure read it through.
"A deed in fee," he said, "for all these lands … to my brother's children. The legal terms are right: 'Doth grant, with covenants of general warranty.' … It is well drawn, Abner; but I am not pleased to 'grant.'"
"Gaul," said Abner, "there are certain reasons that may move you."
The hunchback smiled.
"They must be very excellent to move a man to alienate his lands."
"Excellent they are," said Abner. "I shall mention the best one first."
"Do," said Gaul, and his grotesque face was merry.
"It is this," said Abner: "You have no heirs. Your brother's son is now a man; he should marry a wife and rear up children to possess these lands. And, as he is thus called upon to do what you cannot do, Gaul, he should have the things you have, to use."
"That's a very pretty reason, Abner," said the hunchback, "and it does you honor; but I know a better."
"What is it, Gaul?" said Abner.
The hunchback grinned. "Let us say, my pleasure!"
Then he struck his bootleg with his great black stick.
"And now," he cried, "who's back of this tomfoolery?"
"I am," said Abner.
The hunchback's heavy brows shot down. He was not disturbed, but he knew that Abner moved on no fool's errand.
"Abner," he said, "you have some reason for this thing. What is it?"
"I have several reasons for it," replied Abner, "and I gave you the best one first."
"Then the rest are not worth the words to say them in," cried Gaul.
"You are mistaken there," replied Abner; "I said that I would give you the best reason, not the strongest. … Think of the reason I have given. We do not have our possessions in fee in this world, Gaul, but upon lease and for a certain term of service. And when we make default in that service the lease abates and a new man can take the title."
Gaul did not understand and he was wary.
"I carry out my brother's will," he said.
"But the dead," replied Abner, "cannot retain dominion over things. There can be no tenure beyond a life estate. These lands and chattels are for the uses of men as they arrive. The needs of the living overrule the devises of the dead."
Gaul was watching Abner closely. He knew that this was some digression, but he met it with equanimity. He put his big, hairy fingers together and spoke with a judicial air.
"Your argument," he said, "is without a leg to stand on. It is the dead who govern. Look you, man, how they work their will upon us! Who have made the laws? The dead! Who have made the customs that we obey and that form and shape our lives? The dead! And the titles to our lands—have not the dead devised them? … If a surveyor runs a line he begins at some corner that the dead set up; and if one goes to law upon a question the judge looks backward through his books until he finds out how the dead have settled it—and he follows that. And all the writers, when they would give weight and authority to their opinions, quote the dead; and the orators and all those who preach and lecture—are not their mouths filled with words that the dead have spoken? Why, man, our lives follow grooves that the dead have run out with their thumbnails!"
He got on his feet and looked at Abner.
"What my brother has written in his will I will obey," he said. "Have you seen that paper, Abner?"
"I have not," said Abner, "but I have read the copy in the county clerk's book. It bequeathed these lands to you."
The hunchback went over to an old secretary standing against the wall. He pulled it open, got out the will and a pack of letters and brought them to the fire. He laid the letters on the table beside Abner's deed and held out the will.
Abner took the testament and read it.
"Do you know my brother's writing?" said Gaul.
"I do," said Abner.
"Then you know he wrote that will."
"He did," said Abner. "It is in Enoch's hand." Then he added: "But the date is a month before your brother came here."
"Yes," said Gaul; "it was not written in this house. My brother sent it to me. See—here is the envelope that it came in, postmarked on that date."
Abner took the envelope and compared the date. "It is the very day," he said, "and the address is in Enoch's hand."
"It is," said Gaul; "when my brother had set his signature to this will he addressed that cover. He told me of it." The hunchback sucked in his cheeks and drew down his eyelids. "Ah, yes," he said, "my brother loved me!"
"He must have loved you greatly," replied Abner, "to thus disinherit his own flesh and blood."
"And am not I of his own flesh and blood too?" cried the hunchback. "The strain of blood in my brother runs pure in me; in these children it is diluted. Shall not one love his own blood first?"
"Love!" echoed Abner. "You speak the word, Gaul—but do you understand it?"
"I do," said Gaul; "for it bound my brother to me."
"And did it bind you to him?" said Abner.
I could see the hunchback's great white eyelids drooping and his lengthened face.
"We were like David and Jonathan," he said. "I would have given my right arm for Enoch and he would have died for me."
"He did!" said Abner.
I saw the hunchback start, and, to conceal the gesture, he stooped and thrust the trunk of the apple tree a little farther into the fireplace. A cloud of sparks sprang up. A gust of wind caught the loose sash in the casement behind us and shook it as one, barred out and angry, shakes a door. When the hunchback rose Abner had gone on.
"If you loved your brother like that," he said, "you will do him this service—you will sign this deed."
"But, Abner," replied Gaul, "such was not my brother's will. By the law, these children will inherit at my death. Can they not wait?"
"Did you wait?" said Abner.
The hunchback flung up his head.
"Abner," he cried, "what do you mean by that?" And he searched my uncle's face for some indicatory sign; but there was no sign there—the face was stern and quiet.
"I mean," said Abner, "that one ought not to have an interest in another's death."
"Why not?" said Gaul.
"Because," replied Abner, "one may be tempted to step in before the providence of God and do its work for it."
Gaul turned the innuendo with a cunning twist.
"You mean," he said, "that these children may come to seek my death?"
I was astonished at Abner's answer.
"Yes," he said; "that is what I mean."
"Man," cried the hunchback, "you make me laugh!"
"Laugh as you like," replied Abner; "but I am sure that these children will not look at this thing as we have looked at it."
"As who have looked at it?" said Gaul.
"As my brother Rufus and Elnathan Stone and I," said Abner.