by James Still
Rogan stumbled to his feet. “Meet me at my office about three o’clock this afternoon,” he said, visibly moved. Little quivers of excitement were disturbing the shallow wrinkles on his face. It was powder gray, the color of worn earth.
The courthouse clock had already struck four when Middleton rode out of the square toward Waverly Avenue. The fortuitous deal with Rogan had resulted in particular advantages for both. The whole of his ninety-five bales had been placed among the merchants. They would be paid for on delivery at twelve cents a pound; his debts would be wiped out and the first mortgage on the homeplace taken care of. The second mortgage holder, Lala Stroud, now alone remained to be bargained with, a renewal of affections forty years removed. These years between must be neutralized with the magic chalices of the new season, a new beginning. What afterglow of sentimentality remained must be rekindled into a steady flame.
The bay mare was glad to be moving again. She quivered with expectancy of the alfalfa hay waiting in her stable, shook her head impatiently with her master’s unhurried manner, and quickened her pace only to have him tighten the bridle.
Middleton was suddenly aroused from his thoughts by a clatter of hoofs. A moment later a negro came into sight riding furiously down Cusseta Row, his overall jacket flowing behind him. The bay mare whinnied. It was Blue Jonny on Tess. Middleton waited until he came up. Blue Jonny was breathless and could hardly speak.
“Yore barn, Mister Caesar, yore barn done burned to the ground,” he blurted.
“Which one?” The words came thickly from Middleton’s lips.
“The field barn, Mister Caesar, the one with yore cotton in it. All of it done burned.” Blue Jonny was blubbering through his tears and sweat.
Middleton did not move for a moment. A pallor, white as death, swept over his face. Vague noises trumpeted in his temples.
Slowly he gathered up the reins and turned into Waverly Avenue. He felt an impulse to ride swiftly down the road toward the homeplace, but he checked himself. Nothing could be done there now. He left Blue Jonny with the horses in front of the Stroud house and walked up the narrow graveled lane. One thought clung tenaciously in Middleton’s mind. Only Lala Stroud could save him from utter ruin. There must be no wavering now; he must marry Lala and with her help salvage his property.
He lifted the knocker mechanically and struck it against the brass receiver. The metallic sound echoed through the house. Presently there was a rustle inside the door, and a young woman wearing a brown duster opened it warily. There was a pinched curiosity in her face.
“Is Mrs. Stroud in?” Middleton wondered at the calmness of his voice. The woman in the duster drew back into the hallway. Middleton almost expected the door to be closed in his face. She sniffed audibly and dabbed the corner of the duster in her eyes.
“Miss Lala passed away two weeks ago,” she whispered huskily.
The Hills Remember
“Ole Aus has been shot!”
These strange words poured down into Rangey, the hill-town county seat. Old Aus Hanley was dying on the left bank of Troublesome Creek with a load of buckshot in his back. Men shouted the news hurrying to their stables. The courtroom was suddenly empty of tobacco-chewing spectators, jury, and judge. The dry creek bed became a stampede of men on mules and horses, some riding bareback, threshing their mounts with heel and spur.
Sheriff Byson, his black hat slanted against the wind and the ends of his red mustache curled toward his ears, called to a deputy: “Who done it?” The deputy did not answer, merely slapped his horse furiously with the palm of his right hand. Old Aus Hanley, meanest man on Troublesome—aye on God’s green earth—was going to die. Old Aus was going to lay back in his own blood—the man who had a graveyard all his own across Stormspur filled with men he had killed. The fox of the Kentucky hills had met the bullet God molded for him the day he was born.
Aus Hanley lay spraddle-legged upon the powdery sand, his head resting against a saddle-seat. Red stains spread out from a shapeless hat crushed against his side where the charge had come out. His face, swathed in a week’s growth of beard, was unwrinkled with any evidence of pain, but his eyes, black and burning, had that look of quizzical surprise seen in the eyes of a startled doe.
In a half hour they were all there; all of Rangey to the last man and child stood in a semicircle about the wounded man; all who lived for a mile up the Left Hand Fork and the Right Hand Fork of Troublesome Creek were there staring in a sort of reverent awe at the man they feared and admired. They had never thought it would come to this: Aus Hanley, with eleven notches in his gun, lying with his back on the ground. Mixed with the crowd were the kin of those he had slain, looking bewildered in the revenge they had not shared. None of them would have shot Aus Hanley in the back. It would have been like bedding a rabbit, or shooting a fox after it had gnawed a foot off to escape a trap.
Luke Storr had not tried to escape after the shooting. Standing on a jut of rock high above the creek bed, he had fired toward the broad back of Hanley as he passed. When Hanley tumbled to the ground he crept down the embankment and took his six-shooters. Now as he stood beside the sheriff, whose belt curved awkwardly with Hanley’s pistols, his trembling hands were trussed in handcuffs, and his thin face pale and twitching. Why he had shot Hanley in such a cowardly manner was not evident in his watery, red eyes. But there was a stink of green sugar-top on his breath.
Aus Hanley was gradually getting weaker. The patch of red spread out into the sand beside his body. He crushed the hat tighter against his side. A faint sallowness was beginning to show beneath his beard and the wind-tan. The sheriff and judge had offered to plug the wound but he waved them back without a word. Old Aus would make no compromise at this late hour with the law and justice. They thought if Old Doc Beardsley was there something might be done, but Doc was off on Pushback with a case of slow fever and might not be in for days. Words had been sent to Hanley’s wife and sons. It would be hours before the news could get across Hog Shoulder, down Squabble Creek, and up Laurel Fork and the Hanley family could urge their nags to the Forks of Troublesome.
Hanley stared into the crowd before him, looking into each face, examining it minutely as though he hoped to carry away a deathless impression of it. Presently his burning eyes fell on Luke Storr standing beside the sheriff. His eyes roved from Luke’s new brogans to his meal-yellow face, and there they rested, became calm and peaceful. Old Aus Hanley was sizing up the man who had done him to death.
Luke shuffled his feet nervously in the sand and tried to push into the crowd, but the sheriff thrust him back in front. His lips trembled and he bit them furiously. The bolstering courage of the sugar-top was wearing thin. Now he was thinking of Old Aus’s sons, Jabe and Pridemore. They would avenge their father, shoot him through the jail window the minute they galloped into Rangey. Nobody would try to stop them. Nobody ever tried to stop a Hanley from doing anything. The weight of his conviction bore upon him through his addled senses, and his knees felt brittle as dry canes.
Hanley cleared his throat and spat upon the ground. “Brang Luke over hyar, Byson,” he said. His husky voice was low and collected.
The sheriff pushed Luke forward to where Hanley lay.
“I didn’t figger to be killt by a lousy skunk-cat,” Hanley said. There was no emotion in his voice.
Luke began to snivel. “I was drunk. I wasn’t aiming to do it. . . .”
Hanley spoke again. “They was some who might have shot me in good rights, but I ain’t never had no trouble with you, nor any of yore kin.”
Luke was not afraid of Aus Hanley now. He feared only the inevitable revenge that Jabe and Pridemore would deal out before the sun-ball dropped behind the mountains. He fell upon his knees in the sand beside Hanley and began to beg.
“Aus, fer God’s sake tell ’em hyar to tell yore folks I didn’t mean to do it. I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Hanley shook his head slowly as if in great pain, drew his hand from the wound and
stretched his arms until they were straight and stiff as boards. Anyone could see he couldn’t last much longer. Then he relaxed and his lips moved.
“My sons ain’t a-goin’ to kill you, Luke. I ain’t wanting them to follow in their old poppy’s way o’ life.” His voice trailed off thin and wistful. “Aus Hanley ain’t never shot no man in the back. I ain’t figgering these hyar hills whar I was born and raised is going to forgit that.”
Suddenly Hanley’s left arm shot out with the swiftness of a catamount’s paw, caught Luke across the small of the back, and drew him downward. His right arm lunged a single driving stroke toward Luke’s breast. The sheriff, caught for a moment off his guard, recovered and jerked Luke backward. Luke’s legs threshed about for a moment and were still. The handle of a Barlow knife protruded at an angle from his breast. When the startled crowd thought to look again at old Aus, his eyes were glassy and unseeing.
Incident at Pigeon Roost
Cotton Wallin’s face shone like black ivory in the straw-yellow glow of the oil lamp. Perspiration crowded out of the crinkly mat of his graying hair and glistened in oily drops on his forehead. He sat motionless beside his daughter’s bed, watching for a sign from her purple lips. Her half-closed eyelids were drawn down like dark scallops. For an hour there had been no recognition of suffering in her face, but as he watched, her left hand lifted from the pillow and began to work over the Pine Bloom quilt, her bloodless fingers pulling at the loose frays of wool. A murmur of voices hummed in the room like the swarming of wild bees.
“She’s pickin’ at the kivers.”
Cotton heard the words as through a mist. His blood-shot eyes ran up the wall plastered with pages from a mail order catalog to the book lying on the mantle. They rested there a moment, then lifted higher to the shotgun hanging on a willow rack.
“If’n Lou Cindy dies, I’ll kill Jubal.” The words trembled in Cotton’s throat. It was Jubal’s fault, he knew. Lou Cindy hadn’t gone traipsing around with his kind.
A breath of cool night air penetrated the heavy odor of camphor and warm bodies, rippling the cheesecloth curtains at the front window. A dust of ashes sifted along the floor from the cold hearth. Someone had opened the door.
Jubal stood in the open doorway, his head bent slightly beneath the low sill. He strode into the room and stood beside the bed. Cotton lifted his head mechanically. Lou Cindy lay so still it seemed that she no longer lived.
Jubal cleared his throat huskily. “I’m a-goin’ ter see she don’t want fer nothin’,” he said, moved for the moment with a compassion he had not anticipated.
Cotton stared out of the window. A bluebottle fly buzzed on the pane. He watched its wings beat futilely against the foggy glass.
“I’ll be doin’ the right thang,” Jubal continued. “Don’t yawl be worryin’ none ’bout me.”
Cotton made no answer. Jubal glanced resentfully at him and shuffled out of the room, leaving the door open wide behind him.
Jubal felt better outside. A cool wind blew across Pigeon Roost Swamp, rattling the dead burs in the cotton fields. The moon shone clear and white. Darkness lurked only under the chinaberry trees and the water oaks. Out by the barn, two young men were wrestling on a pile of alfalfa hay. Others sat watching on bales of cotton stacked against the lot fence. He heard their amused grunting and easy laughter.
“G’won, Luke, hold ’em whar you got ’em.”
“Ketch ’em by his britches, Pike, en throw ’em over yer haid.”
Their merriment was like a dash of cold water in Jubal’s face, washing the tenseness and poignancy of the sickroom from his mind. He walked eagerly toward them.
The wrestlers broke as he came up.
“I’ll rassle anybody here,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it on the hay. He playfully drew the muscles of his arms and shoulders until they bulged like knots on a towline. No one offered to try him.
“Take on any two of yer,” he said. His thick lips curled contemptuously at their cowardice. The men who had been wrestling nudged each other.
“G’won, take ’em on,” Luke urged.
“Naw you, you kin do better’n me,” Pike said.
Jubal snatched up his shirt in disgust.
“Reckon you could knock down a bale of cotton wid yer shoulder?” Luke asked sarcastically.
“Gimme a lief?” Jubal grinned.
A bale of cotton was dragged from the pile and set on end. Jubal walked away from it a few yards, swung around quickly, and ran back, striking it near the center with his shoulder. The bale toppled over on its side. It was set up again. Only Pike succeeded in upsetting it, as Jubal had done.
“D’yer reckon you could butt it down with yer haid?” Luke asked, angry that he had not done as well as Jubal and Pike.
“Mought and I mought’n,” Jubal said. “Pike kin have first try.”
Pike held his head low and lurched against the bale. It did not budge. Jubal measured off five steps, crouched, and sprang toward it with all his force, striking it higher than he had intended. It rocked unsteadily but did not fall.
Waiting a moment to recover his wind, Jubal measured off ten steps. He started from a half-kneeling position, digging his toes into the ground and gaining momentum with each stride. Nearing the bale he stiffened his neck and pressed his chin against his chest. As he struck the bale there was a sharp snap, as though a splinter had been broken with the head of an axe. The bale tumbled on its side. Jubal lay still upon the ground with his face turned toward the barn. His eyes were glassy and unseeing in the moonlight.
The men crowded about him. “Done went and broke his neck,” Luke said. They were dazed with the wonder of it.
Suddenly they were aware of an unusual stirring in Cotton Wallin’s house. Moans and loud cries drifted across the lot. One voice rose tremulously above the others. “Oh Lord, she’s done gone, she’s been tuk away.” Someone began singing there and the moaning merged with the hymn.
Lord, Lord, waitin’ on the shore,
Waitin’ fer the boat ter Gloryland,
Lord, Lord, waitin’ at the gate,
Waitin’ fer to enter the Gloryland.
The door of the house swung open. Cotton Wallin came down the steps with a shotgun in his hands. He saw the men standing in the moonlight near the lot fence and walked toward them. They faced him as he came up.
“Whar’s Jubal at?” he asked hoarsely.
Murder on Possum Trot Mountain
It was pine-blank murder. There was no getting ’round that. And it was about as simple a piece o’ business that been done on Caney Creek from the mouth to the head in many a sweet day. But there always something that lets the coon out of the trap. A fellow does a grain o’ something that goes agin’ him, or draps a careless word that sets the woods afire with deputy sheriffs.
When Clayt Darrow first mentioned it to me, I tells him he’s a damn fool right off. If you want to kill a man you better put blinders even on the nag you’re riding.
Clayt reminds me of a dog trying to lay down on shuck. He’d been trying to make up his mind to it a long time, but he ain’t got the nerve. He knows I ain’t been packing no particular brotherly love for Sibo Bonner since my foxhound tuk up with him six months ago. That is, I hear tell my dog is at his place, though I ain’t sot eyes on him and I’ve watched by the hour from the top of the mountain. Anyway my pap didn’t like his pap, and my grandpap and his grandpap swapped a couple o’ shots at each other way back. I always reckoned Sibo was a rattlesnake.
I knowed Clayt would make up his mind to it sooner or later. Me and Clayt had been running ’round together nigh on ten years, ever since we was little scrappers. We’d done lots o’ meanness. Once we got us a hollow log and stretched a strip o’ dried bull’s hide over it and sawed on it with a bow made out of a hickory limb. You could have heard that noise ten miles on a cold night, and it sounded like a passel o’ wildcats screaming and tearing each other’s eyeballs out. The cattle all over the country jumped the
fences and went flying the other way; the horses and mules kicked the barn doors down and tuk out after them. Well, we done more thangs than I could tell in a full moon, but we never done a thang that we got by with. Clayt always give us away. He got too tickled over something we’d done. He’d look guilty as the devil for a month after we’d pulled a little meanness.
Me and Clayt had done a lot o’ thangs together but we ain’t never killed a man. We’s cut saddles off of horses hitched at the church-house at night just for puore cussedness; we’d tuk boards out o’ swinging bridges and watched somebody drop through to the creek. I reckon we done about everything mean thar is to do on this green airth. But you could depend on Clayt letting it out some-way. Afore long I stopped running with Clayt. I was gitting sort o’ tired rotting out six-months terms in jail because Clayt couldn’t keep his face straight and his tongue civil.
When Clayt named it to me about killing Sibo Bonner I laughed plumb in his face. He says I got a yellow streak running down my back wider than a handsaw. Then he names my hound dog to me Sibo had fetched off; then he says he’d be willing to bet me a war pension, if he had one, that Sibo would never let me git in shouting distance o’ Ransey. And I knowed my chances o’ sparking Ransey was pore as a mare’s skeleton when the buzzards got through with it.
Clayt says he’ll split that bunch o’ money Sibo is packing since he sold that bunch o’ timber on Big Branch with me. I kin have my foxhound back, and I’ll be setting pretty as a beagle with Ransey.
I tells Clayt he’s a damn fool if he thinks I’m a-going to get messed up with him in any sort o’ scrape. I ain’t never had a mind to kill nobody. It made me kind of woozy down in the stomach when I thought about pinting a gun at a fellow when he ain’t expecting it and sending a slug o’ lead into his heart. But I knowed Clayt was a-going to do it. He got sort of franzied at first, but with about four or five shots o’ rotgut he’d put a case o’ dynamite under the courthouse if it entered his mind he wanted to do it.
