Groping about in her pocket, she found a box of safety matches. Having lighted one of these she held it far out before her. At once her lips parted in an exclamation of surprise.
Before her, leading down, down, down, was a rude stairway cut in solid rock. On either side of the stairway were mine props, and back of these were black walls of coal.
It was all clear to her in an instant; not all, perhaps, but much. There were many just such veins of coal as this in the rockiest portions of the Cumberlands. She had heard of them. After the ages had passed when coal had been deposited upon the surface of the earth and strata of earth and rocks piled upon them, there had come some tremendous disturbance of the earth’s surface which had tilted rocks and coal deposits as well, and this was just such a vein.
There was nothing so strange about that, but it was strange to find this natural stairway leading downward to some regions unknown.
Just as her match flickered and went out her eyes caught the gleam of something white in a niche of the rock at her side. At once she was fumbling eagerly for another match.
To her consternation, in her excitement she let the box drop from her fingers.
Bump, bump, bump, it went down the steps. For an instant her heart stood still. Had it gone on down? Was she left without a light? She thought it had stopped on the third step, but could not be sure.
Slowly, carefully, she felt her way over the damp and slippery steps. One step, two, three. She felt them over carefully. No matches. Her heart sank. One more step, a hasty groping in the dark, then a cry of joy. She gripped the box.
The next moment the place was alight with a reddish yellow glow, and the next instant, standing up, she was grasping the white object that had caught her eye. It was one of four tallow candles that lay in a rocky niche.
Holding her match to it, she had the joy of seeing its wick sputter, then flame up.
One moment she hesitated. Then, putting one of the candles in her pocket, and holding another well before her, with a firm and steady step she began the descent into the mysterious cavern.
CHAPTER XIII
A TENSE SITUATION
It was mysterious, haunting, spectral. “Like going down into the tomb of some ancient Egyptian king,” Florence told herself as, with candle held well out before her, and every step carefully poised, she made her way down the long stone stairway.
Black walls of coal were on either side. Before these the mine props stood like grim sentinels. The shadows of these, cast by the flickering light of the candle, appeared to take on life as they leaped, swaying and dancing, against the dusky walls.
Suddenly the girl caught her breath. A puff of air had all but extinguished her candle.
“And it came from below, not from above!” she breathed.
Scarcely had she made this astonishing discovery when she rounded a curve in the stairway and came in sight of a square of light. This distant illumination, the natural light of day, coming from the outside, seemed to beckon her on.
Then of a sudden it all came to her. “A tunnel!” she exclaimed. “Not the entrance to a mine, but a tunnel, a tunnel through this narrow peak of the mountain. Oh, joy! I’ve found the way out!”
In her eagerness she plunged down the stone stairway at a rate which threatened to send her pitching headlong. But sure-footed athlete that she was, she kept her balance and in another moment, panting, quite out of breath, she threw herself upon a huge flat rock that, lighted by the last rays of the setting sun, seemed a nugget of pure gold.
The scene her eyes gazed upon was of matchless beauty. The crests of the mountains, still beamed upon by the setting sun, glowed like so many domes of fire, while farther down the lower hillsides and valleys were shrouded in impenetrable shadows broken only by the silver thread of a stream that idled down a valley.
Suddenly the girl sprang to her feet. The whole thing had come to her in a flash. Wishing to be left alone, the mysterious people at the head of Laurel Branch had cut a pass through the solid mountain peak at a narrow place. They alone knew of it. Through this pass they carried the produce from their rough little farms to the coal mines far, far below. There they bartered them for shoes, salt, calico, and whatever their meager existence demanded.
“And this,” she told herself, “is the way the missing peddler and the one-armed fiddler have gone. Being wanderers by profession, they have gone through this pass and never been seen again by the people at the mouth of Laurel Branch.
“And that,” she exclaimed, quite overcome by the thought, “that means that these people at the head of Laurel Branch are honest folks. They are not robbers and murderers. I had hoped it might be so. It did not seem possible that old Job could sit there by the fire, spelling out the words of his Bible, then lay the grand old Book aside to go out robbing and killing.”
Then the girl did a strange thing. Relighting her candle, she picked her way over the rocks back to the entrance to the tunnel, then slowly, with thoughtful mind and careful tread, began ascending the stone stairway. She was going back.
* * * *
In the meantime, down at the mouth of Laurel Branch, in the heart of the laurel thicket, the low murmur of voices increased in volume. They were coming—the clan was gathering. Gaunt old men with white beards were there, men who had fought in the Civil War; middle-aged men who had packed a gun in the Anson-Rankin feud of twenty years before; and beardless boys who had never fired a shot except at squirrel or possum. One name was on every tongue, that of Florence Ormsby.
As for Florence, while the night shadows darkened she was making her way down the mountain trail, back to the cabin of old Job, the one-armed giant.
Once there, she threw off her hat and coat and drew up a chair to the fire.
“Et?” the giant asked from his corner.
The girl shook her head.
“Want a snack?”
Another shake, then again silence.
For a long while the nickel alarm clock above the mantel raced against time and its constant tick-tick was the only sound that disturbed the Sabbath-like stillness.
At last the aged giant cleared his throat with surprising difficulty, then spoke:
“I reckon it peers plumb quare to you all that we all stay up here in these here mountains this away?”
Florence did not answer. She merely bent forward with an air of great expectancy on her face.
“Hit might be quare. Then again it mightn’t. Listen, Miss, hit’s like this.”
Then for fifteen minutes, in his inimitable mountain dialect and drawl, the old man poured into her eager ears a story of such bitter battling for life, such a tale of feud fighting, as she had never before dreamed of hearing from human lips.
There were tales of stalwart men shot down on their very doorsteps, of battles in the night, of men carried from their homes to be seen no more.
All this had happened somewhere in the mountains, back of Big Black Mountain, beyond Poor Fork, over Pine Mountain, then back and still back.
When there remained but a remnant of what had once been a powerful family, the old giant, having heard of this vacant land at the head of Laurel Branch, had at last persuaded his followers to come here to live. And that there might be no more battles and bloodshed, they had shut themselves completely out from other people of the mountains. Only by a secret passage had they come and gone, to trade and barter in the valley below.
How strange life is! Even as this old man was telling of their long search for peace and how at last they had found it, forty men and boys, grim, determined mountain folks with rifles in hand, were marching upon the stone gateway which had heretofore held them back. It was Ransom Turner’s clan.
“And what’s this I hearn tell about?” the old giant exclaimed in a rumbling tone of anger. “What about them sorry people at the mouth of the crick takin’ you up fer gun totin’?”
Florence started. So intense had been her interest in the story that she had quite forgotten her own troubles.
&
nbsp; “They—they’re to try me tomorrow,” she faltered.
“Fer gun totin’?”
“Yes.”
“A woman? Fer gun totin’!” he mused. “Mountain folks have come tew that!
“And this ’lection, this school ’lection,” he rumbled with a sudden change of subject. “How do you reckon about that?”
“That is tomorrow, too, and it’s lost.”
“So I hearn tell,” the old man mused. “So I hearn tell. But you can’t always reckon right about these here things, kin you?”
There was almost jocular freedom in the old man’s tones, something quite different from his Moses-like dignity of other times.
Again his tone changed. It was tender now.
“You’ve been mighty nice and a right smart help to us with little Hallie. I reckon she’s might nigh well now. I reckon as how you might—”
The old man paused as if reluctant to say the words that had forced their way to his lips. Leaving the sentence unfinished, he fumbled about in the corner for a poker. Having found it, he gave the fire such a jabbing as sent the sparks dancing by thousands up the chimney.
There were watchers who saw those sparks soaring skyward and wondered at them—forty watchers, the men of Ransom Turner’s clan.
At that very moment, too, the guard behind the stone gateway, catching the shuffle of feet behind the thicket of paw-paws that grew just outside the gate, caught his breath hard and, shifting his rifle to the other arm, dropped back into the deeper shadows.
“As I was about to remark,” the old man turned to Florence with a look of resolution on his face, “’t’ain’t no mite o’ sense in keepin’ you here, not nary ’nother minute. There’s little Hallie, she’s might nigh well. There’s that sorry trial tomorrow, an’ that ’lection. They’ll be ailing fer you down there at the mouth of the creek, plumb ailin’, so it’s fittin’ that you’d go. You tell Zeb Howard down thar by the gate that I sent you, and I reckon he’ll let you by.”
Florence caught her breath. She had heard the old man’s story. She was free. She might go. For a moment, as a wild bird, made captive for a day and then set free hesitates before his first free flight, she sat there in silence. Then, as if impelled by the sense of impending peril and a great need, she rose and hurried away.
Need enough there was, too. Her fleet feet could not cover that distance too quickly, for at that moment hot words were passing thick and fast before the stone gateway.
As she paused in her sudden flight she caught the sound of these angry voices. At first indistinct, then growing louder as she rounded a curve, she caught fragments of sentences:
“Narry a step.”—“Hit are!”—“Hit are not!”—“Drop down the barrel of that ar gun!”—“Hit’s plumb unnatural!”
Then, having caught a hint of the meaning of it all, she paused to strain her ears to catch the lowest word. At that moment there came the ominous click of a cartridge being thrown into its place in a rifle barrel. This sound came from within the gate.
“The guard,” she whispered.
“I tell you all plain,” there came from the same spot a second later, “we all don’t mean you all nary bit of harm. You all go on back down that crick. The land down thar belongs to you all. Up here it’s ourn. Don’t let’s have any trouble.”
“‘An’ I’m tellin’ you, stranger,” came in an equally insistent voice, “we all are goin’ through. You are got someone up that we want and are goin’ to git!”
“Hain’t nary one up yonder that’s not aimin’ to stay.”
“Come on, boys!” Florence caught these words spoken in low tones by a voice that sounded familiar. The voice was terrifying in its seriousness. “We got to go in thar. Hain’t no other way. When I say the word start comin’ on an’ firin’ as you come. He can’t git all of us. Mebbe he won’t get airy one. ’T’ain’t no use a talkin’ to him no-how.”
Florence caught her breath. Her heart paused for a second, then went racing. Her knees trembled. She had heard much of mountain feud fights. Now she was about to witness one. Worse than that, she must be directly in the path of the bullets. At realization of this she wanted to flee, but her feet would not obey her. So there she stood as if rooted to the spot.
Though her feet were still, her brain was racing. She had recognized the voice of the last speaker, Ransom Turner. A good man does not start a feud fight over a trifle. Why had they come? Who was this person they had come to demand? Was it a friend, or some outlaw fleeing from justice? She did not have long to wait.
“Just a minute, strangers,” came in calm tones from within the gates. “You kin get me maybe—seem’s how there’s a army of you—but count on it, I’ll get a lot of you first. I’m the shootinest man as I reckon has most ever made a crop on Laurel Branch. But I’m plumb peaceably minded, too. Hain’t rarin’ up fer no killin’. Now what I wants to know is, who might that air person be that you all come after?”
“You know well enough,” drawled Ransom Turner. “But so’s you’ll know agin’, I’ll tell you. Hit’s our teacher, Florence Ormsby.”
Florence Ormsby! The girl’s own name sounded strange to her. So they were risking their lives to save her! And she was an outsider! A great wave of dizziness came over her. She fought it off. She tried to speak. Her tongue clung to the roof of her mouth. Powerless to move, she stood there gasping.
“Come on, boys! ’T’ain’t no use foolin’ further.”
The grim tones of the doughty little leader loosed the girl’s tongue. Then, with tones that were little less than shrieks, she cried:
“Ransom! Ransom Turner! Don’t! Don’t do it! I’m here. It’s all right. I’m coming out.”
After this shouted speech that awoke shrill echoes along the mountain side, there fell a moment of breathless silence, such a silence as is perhaps seldom felt save on a battlefield after the declaration of a truce.
Then, in a tone that told of deeper emotional struggle, there came from Ransom Turner’s lips:
“Are you shore, Miss Florence? Are hit all right?”
“Quite all right,” she said in as steady a tone as she could command. “See! I am coming down.”
Moving quietly, she passed the last tall pine, the last clump of rhododendrons within the gate, then the massive portals, and a moment later found herself among her own people, free.
Free! How good it seemed! And yet, as between two silent mountaineers she walked back to the settlement and the whipsawed house, she felt the burdens of these simple people come back to her shoulders like a crushing weight.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “The trial and the election, and then what?”
Later that night, after a joyous reunion and a splendid supper in the whipsawed cabin, she lay once more in her own bed, staring up at the ceiling where the flashes of a dying fire played. Then it was that she noted something strange. The board they had once taken from the ceiling that they might get into the attic had been once more removed, then replaced. She knew this, for this time it had been put back with the ends reversed.
Vaguely her mind played with this thought. Who had been up there? What had they found? Georgia gold? Confederate gold?
She wondered about the election; her trial; Bud Wax. Wondered a little about Marion, who had gone down the branch to stay all night with Patience Madden, the oldest girl in their school. Was she sleeping safely in Patience’s cabin? In this strange community no one seemed quite safe.
She wondered a little about the deed for the Powell coal land and the commission they were to receive—sometime. When would that be? She wondered if she would ever see any of the men who had kidnapped her. Her mental picture of them was very vivid.
“If I ever saw them again I would know them,” she told herself.
At that she turned over and fell asleep.
The adventures of the night for Florence were done; for Marion they were now about to begin.
CHAPTER XIV
HALLIE KIDNAPPED
Ma
rion was wide awake. She lay beneath home-woven blankets in Patience Madden’s cabin. The room was dark. It was night; time for sleep. The mountain side was very still. Even the stream, Pounding Mill Creek, tumbling down Little Black Mountain, murmured softly.
“I should sleep,” she told herself. “Tomorrow is the big day. Election. Trial. One big day. Twenty-for hours must decide all.”
Do coming events truly cast their shadows before them, and do their shadows disturb us, rob us of our sleep? However that may be, Marion could not sleep.
At last, rising noiselessly, for Patience slept peacefully in the narrow bed next to her own, she threw a blanket over her shoulders and stole out upon the porch. Here she dropped into a rustic chair to sit staring dreamily at the moon.
“Old moon,” she whispered, “what do you see tonight?”
Had the moon answered her question she would have sprung to her feet in alarm. As it was, she sat quite still, sat there until with a sudden start she caught the slow and steady tramp of horses on the trail below.
“Who—who can that be?” she whispered as she shrank far back into the shadows.
She was soon enough to know. Two horses swung around a curve in the trail not five rods from the cabin. At that instant the moon, coming out from behind a filmy cloud, shone full upon them.
“A tall slim man and a short one,” she thought to herself. “Sounds vaguely familiar. Where have I—” She started suddenly. Florence had told her of them. These were the men who had held her prisoner when she had gone to the back of Pine Mountain to get an option on the Powell coal tract.
A second shock following this one came near knocking her from her chair. The tall man carried a bundle—something wrapped in a blanket.
“A child,” she whispered. A chill ran up her spine. She hardly knew why.
A second later she knew. As the horses wheeled sharply to avoid a great boulder that lay against the trail, the face of the child, lighted up by the moon, became plainly visible.
“Little Hallie!” Marion exclaimed under her breath.
In an instant she was out of her chair and in the room shaking the mountain girl and whispering hoarsely:
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