Mary Noailles Murfree - 7 best short stories by Mary Noailles Murfree

And now suddenly this light was dimmed; his laurels were wilting. What prestige would the capture of Tolhurst have conferred! Never had a golden opportunity like this been lost—by what uncovenanted chance had Tolhurst escaped?

"He must have had a guide! Right here in the Cove!" Ackert exclaimed. "Nobody outside would know a hole in the ground, a cave, a water-gap, a tunnel like that! Where's the man?"

"Naw, sir—naw, Cap'n! Nobody viewed the troop but one gal person an' she 'lowed she never seen no guide."

The charger whirled under the touch of the hand on the rein, and Ackert's eyes scanned with a searching intentness the group.

"Where's this girl—you?"

As the old squire with most unwelcome officiousness seized Ethelinda's arm and hurried her forward, her heart sank within her. For one moment the guerilla's fiery, piercing eyes dwelt upon her as she stood looking on, her delicately white face grown deathly pallid, her golden hair frivolously blowsed in the wind, which tossed the full skirts of her lilac-hued calico gown till she seemed poised on the very wings of flight. Her sapphire eyes, bluer than ever azure skies could seem, sought to gaze upward, but ever and anon their long-lashed lids fluttered and fell.

He was quick of perception.

"You have no call to be afraid," he remarked—a sort of gruff upbraiding, as if her evident trepidation impugned his justice in reprisal. "Come, you can guide me. Show me just where they came in, and just where they got out—damn 'em!"

She could scarcely control her terror when she saw that he intended her to ride with him to the spot, yet she feared even more to draw back, to refuse. He held out one great spurred boot. Her little low-cut shoe looked tiny upon it as she stepped up. He swung her to the saddle behind him, and the great warhorse sprang forward so suddenly, with such long, swift strides, that she swayed precariously for a moment and was glad to catch the guerilla's belt—to seize, too, with an agitated clutch, his right gauntlet that he held backward against his side. His fingers promptly closed with a reassuring grasp on hers, and thus skimming the red sunset-tide they left behind them the staring group about the blacksmith shop, which the cavalrymen had now approached, watering their horses at the trough and lifting the saddles to rest the animals from the constriction of the pressure of the girths.

Soon the guerilla and the girl disappeared in the distance; the fences flew by; the shocks of corn seemed all a-trooping down the fields; the evening star in the red haze above the purple western mountains had spread its invisible pinions, and was a-wing above their heads. Presently the heavy shadows of the looming wooded range, darkening now, showing only blurred effects of red and brown and orange, fell upon them, and the guerilla checked the pace, for the horse was among boulders and rough ledges that betokened the dry bed of a stream. Great crags had begun to line the way, first only on one marge of the channel; then the clifty banks appeared on the other side, and at length a deep, black-arched opening yawned beneath the mountains, glooming with sepulchral shadows; in the silence one might hear drops trickling vaguely and the sudden hooting of an owl from within.

He drew up his horse abruptly, and contemplated the grim aperture.

"So they came into Tanglefoot down the road, and went out of the Cove by this tunnel?"

"Yessir!" she piped. What had befallen her voice? what appalled eerie squeak was this! She cleared her throat timorously. "They couldn't hev done it later in the fall season. Tanglefoot Creek gits ter runnin' with the fust rains."

"An' Tolhurst knew that too! He must have had a guide—a guide that knows the Cove like I know the palm of my hand! Well, I'll catch him yet, sometime. I'll hang him! I'll hang him—if I have to grow a tree a-purpose."

What strange influence had betided the landscape? Around and around circled the great stationary mountains anchored in the foundations of the earth. It was a long moment before they were still again—perhaps, indeed, it was the necessity of guarding her balance on the fiery steed, a new cause of apprehension, that paradoxically steadied Ethelinda's nerves. Ackert had dismounted, throwing the reins over his arm. He had caught sight of the hoofmarks along the moist sandy spaces of the channel, mute witness in point of number, and a guaranty of the truth of her story. A sudden glitter arrested his eyes. He stooped and picked up a broken belt-buckle with the significant initials U.S. yet showing upon it.

"I'll hang that guide yet," he muttered, his eyes dark with angry conviction, his face lowering with fury. "I'll hang him—I won't expect to prove it p'int blank. Jes' let me git a mite o' suspicion, an' I'll guarantee the slipknot!"

She could never understand her motive, her choice of the moment.

"Cap'n Ackert," she trembled forth. There was so much significance in her tone that, standing at her side, he looked up in sudden expectation. "I tole ye the truth whenst I say I seen no guide"—he made a gesture of impatience; he had no time for twice-told tales—"kase—kase the guide war—war—myself."

The clear twilight fell full on his amazed, upturned face and the storm of fury it concentrated.

"What did you do it fur?" he thundered, "you limb o' perdition!"

"Jes' ter help him some. He—he—he—would hev been capshured."

He would indeed! The guerilla was very terrible to look upon as his brow corrugated, and his upturned eyes, with the light of the sky within them, flashed ominously.

"You little she-devil!" he cried, and then speech seemed to fail him.

She had begun to shiver and shed tears and emit little gusts of quaking sobs.

"Oh, I be so feared——" she whimpered. "But—but—you mustn't hang—nobody else on s'picion!"

There was a vague change in the expression of his face. He still stood beside the saddle, with the reins over his arm, while the horse threw his head almost to the ground and again tossed it aloft in his impatient weariness of the delay.

"An' now you are captured yourself," he said, sternly. "You are accountable fur your actions."

She burst into a paroxysm of sobs. "I never went ter tell! I meant ter keep the secret! The folks in the Cove dun'no' nuthin'. But—oh, ye mustn't s'picion nobody else—ye mustn't hang nobody else!"

Once more that indescribable change upon his face.

"You showed him the way to this pass yourself? Tell the truth!"

"He war ridin' his horse-critter—'tain't ez fast, nor fine, nor fat ez yourn."

He stroked the glossy mane with a sort of mechanical pride.

"And so he went plumb through the cave?"

"An' all the troop—they kindled pine-knots fur torches."

He glanced about him at the convenient growths.

"And they came out all safe in Greenbrier?" He winced. How the lost opportunity hurt him!

"Yessir. In Greenbrier Cove."

"Did he pay you in gold?" sneered Ackert. "Or in greenbacks? Or mebbe in Cornfed money?"

"I wouldn't hev his gold." She drew herself up proudly, though the tears were still coursing down her cheeks. "So he gin me a present—a whole passel o' coffee in my milk-piggin." Then to complete a candid confession she detailed the disposition she had made of this rare and precious luxury at the rebel smallpox camp.

His eyes seemed to dilate as they gazed up at her. "Jesus Gawd!" he exclaimed, with uncouth profanity. But the phrase was unfamiliar to her, and she caught at it with a meaning all her own.

"That's jes' it! Folks in gineral don't think o' them,'cept ter git out o' thar way; an' nobody keers fur them, but kase Jesus is Gawd He makes somebody remember them wunst in a while! An' they did seem passable glad."

A vague sweet fragrance was on the vesperal air; some subtle distillation of asters or jewel-weed or "mountain-snow," and the leafage of crimson sumac and purple sweet-gum and yellow hickory and the late ripening frost-grapes—all in the culmination of autumnal perfection; more than one star gleamed whitely palpitant in a sky that was yet blue and roseate with a reminiscence of sunset; a restful sentiment, a brief truce stilled the guerilla's tempestuous pulse as he continued to stand beside his horse's head while the girl waited, seated on the saddle blanket.