Down the Ravine | Project Gutenberg

Tennessee, overpowered by disappointment, sobbed herself to sleep upon the floor, and then ensued an interval of quiet. Rufe, a towheaded boy of ten, dressed in an unbleached cotton shirt and blue-checked homespun trousers, concluded that this moment was the accepted time to count the balls in his brother’s shot-pouch. This he proceeded to do, with the aid of the sullen glare from the embers within and the fluctuating gleams of the lightning without. There was no pretense of utility in Rufe’s performance; only the love of handling lead could explain it.

“Ye hed better mind,” his mother admonished him. “Birt war powerful tried the t’other day ter think what hed gone with his bullets. He’ll nose ye out afore long.”

“They hev got sech a fool way o’ slippin’ through the chinks in the floor,” said the boy in exasperation. “I never seen the beat! An’ thar’s no gittin’ them out, nuther. I snaked under the house yestiddy an’ sarched, an’ sarched! - an’ I never fund but two. An’ Towse, he dragged hisself under thar, too - jes’ a-growlin’ an’ a-snappin’. I thought fur sartin every minit he’d bite my foot off.”

He resumed his self-imposed task of counting the rifle balls, and now and then a sharp click told that another was consigned to that limbo guarded by Towse. Mrs. Dicey stood in silence for a time, gazing upon the unutterably gloomy forest, the distant, throbbing stars, and the broad, wan flashes at long intervals gleaming through the sky.

“It puts me in a mighty tucker ter hev yer brother a-settin’ out through the woods this hyar way, an’ a-leavin’ of we-uns hyar, all by ourselves sech a dark night. I’m always afeared thar mought be a bar a-prowlin’ round. An’ the cornfield air close ter the house, too.”

“Pete Thompson - him ez war yander ter the tanyard day ’fore yestiddy with his dad,” said the boy, “he tole it ter me ez how he seen a bar las’ Wednesday a-climbin’ over the fence ter thar cornfield, with a haffen dozen roastin’-ears under his arm an’ a watermillion on his head. But

it a haffen dozen? I furgits now ef Pete said it war a haffen dozen or nine ears of corn the bar hed;” and he paused to reflect in the midst of his important occupation.

“I’ll be bound Pete never stopped ter count ’em,” said Mrs. Dicey. “Pick that chile up an’ come in. I’m goin’ ter bar up the door.”

Birt Dicey plodded away through the deep woods and the dense darkness down the ravine. Although he could not now distinguish one stone from another, he had an uncontrollable impulse to visit again the treasure he had discovered. The murmur of the gently bubbling water warned him of the proximity of the deep salt spring almost at the base of the mountain, and, guiding himself partly by the sound, he made his way along the slope to the great bowlder beneath the cliffs that served to mark the spot. As he laid his hand on the bowlder, he experienced a wonderful exhilaration of spirit. Once more he canvassed his scheme. This was the one great opportunity of his restricted life. Visions of future possibilities were opening wide their fascinating vistas. He might make enough to buy a horse, and this expressed his idea of wealth. “But ef I live ter git a cent out’n it,” he said to himself, “I’ll take the very fust money I kin call my own an’ buy Tennessee a chany cup an’ sarcer, an’ a string o’ blue beads an’ a caliky coat - ef I die fur it.”

His pleased reverie was broken by a sudden discovery. He was not standing among stones about the great bowlder; no - his foot had sunk deep in the sand! He stooped down in the darkness and felt about him. The spot was not now as he had left it yesterday afternoon. He was sure of this, even before a fleet, wan flash of the heat lightning showed him at his feet the unmistakable signs of a recent excavation. It was not deep, it was not broad; but it was fresh and it betrayed a prying hand. Again the heat lightning illumined the wide, vague sky. He saw the solemn dark forests; he saw the steely glimmer of the lick; the distant mountains flickered against the pallid horizon; and once more - densest gloom.

It was Nate who had been here, - Birt felt sure of that; Nate, who had promised he would not come.

Convinced that his friend was playing a false part, Birt went at once to the bark-mill in the morning, confident that he would not find Nate at work in the tanyard according to their agreement.

It was later than usual, and Jubal Perkins swore at Birt for his tardiness. He hardly heard; and as the old bark-mill ground and ground the bark, and the mule jogged around and around, and the hot sun shone, and the voices of the men handling the hides at the tanpit were loud on the air, all his thoughts were of the cool, dark, sequestered ravine, holding in its cloven heart the secret he had discovered.

Rufus happened to come to the tanyard today. Birt seized the opportunity.

“Rufe,” he said, “ye see I can’t git away from the mill, ’kase I’m ’bleeged ter stay hyar whilst the old mule grinds. But ef ye’ll go over yander ter Nate Griggs’s house an’ tell him ter come over hyar, bein’ ez I want to see him partic’lar, I’ll fix ye a squir’l-trap before long ez the peartest old Bushy-tail on the mounting ain’t got the gumption ter git out’n. An’ let me know ef Nate ain’t thar.”

Rufe was disposed to parley. He stood first on one foot, then on the other. He cast calculating eyes at the bark-mill and out upon the deep forest. The exact date on which this promise was to be fulfilled had to be fixed before he announced his willingness to set out.

Ten to one, he would have gone without the bribe, had none been suggested, for he loved the woods better than the woodpile, and a five-mile tramp through its tangles wearied his bones not so much as picking up a single basketful of chips. Some boys’ bones are constituted thus, strange as it may seem.

So he went his way in his somewhat eccentric gait, compounded of a hop, and a skip, and a dawdle. He had made about half a mile when the path curved to the mountain’s brink. He paused and parted the glossy leaves of the dense laurel that he might look out over the precipice at the distant heights. How blue - how softly blue they were! - the endless ranges about the horizon. What a golden haze melted on those nearer at hand, bravely green in the sunshine! From among the beetling crags, the first red leaf was whirling away against the azure sky. Even a buzzard had its picturesque aspects, circling high above the mountains in its strong, majestic flight. To breathe the balsamic, sunlit air was luxury, happiness; it was a wonder that Rufe got on as fast as he did. How fragrant and cool and dark was the shadowy valley! A silver cloud lay deep in the waters of the “lick.” Why Rufe made up his mind to go down there, he could hardly have said - sheer curiosity, perhaps. He knew he had plenty of time to get to Nate’s house and back before dark. People who sent Rufe on errands usually reckoned for two hours’ waste in each direction. He had no idea of descending the cliffs as Birt had done. He stolidly retraced his way until he was nearly home; then scrambling down rocky slopes he came presently upon a deer-path. All at once, he noticed the footprint of a man in a dank, marshy spot. He stopped and looked hard at it, for he had naturally supposed this path was used only by the woodland gentry.

“Some deer-hunter, I reckon,” he said. And so he went on.

With his characteristic curiosity, he peered all around the “lick” when he was at last there. He even applied his tongue, calf-like, to the briny earth; it did not taste so salty as he had expected. As he rolled over luxuriously on his back among the fragrant summer weeds, he caught sight of something in the branches of an oak tree. He sat up and stared. It looked like a rude platform. After a moment, he divined that it was the remnant of a scaffold from which some early settler of Tennessee had been wont to fire upon the deer or the buffalo at the “lick,” below. Such relics, some of them a century old, are to be seen to this day in sequestered nooks of the Cumberland Mountains. Rufe had heard of these old scaffolds, but he had never known of the existence of this one down by the “lick.” He sprang up, a flush of excitement contending with the dirt on his countenance; he set his squirrel teeth resolutely together; he applied his sturdy fingers and his nimble legs to the bark of the tree, and up he went like a cat.

He climbed to the lower branches easily enough, but he caused much commotion and swaying among them as he struggled through the foliage. An owl, with great remonstrant eyes, suddenly looked out of a hollow, higher still, with an inarticulate mutter of mingled reproach, and warning, and anxiety. Rufe settled himself on the platform, his bare feet dangling about jocosely. Then, beating his hands on either thigh to mark the time he sang in a loud, shrill soprano, prone now and then to be flat, and yet, impartially, prone now and then to be sharp: -

Thar war two sun-dogs in the red day-dawn,

An’ the wind war laid - ’t war prime fur game.

I went ter the woods betimes that morn,

An’ tuk my flint-lock, “Nancy,” by name;

An’ thar I see, in the crotch of a tree,

A great big catamount grinnin’ at me.

A-kee! he! he! An’ a-ho! ho! he!

A pop-eyed catamount laffin’ at me!

And, as Rufe sang, the anger and remonstrance in the owl’s demeanor increased every moment. For the owl was a vocalist, too!

Bein’ made game of by a brute beastis,

War su’thin’ I could in no ways allow.

I jes’ spoke up, for my dander hed riz,

“Cat - take in the slack o’ yer jaw!”

He bowed his back - Nance sighted him gran’,

Then the blamed old gal jes’ flashed in the pan!

A-kee! he! he! An’ a-ho! ho! he!

With a outraged catamount rebukin’ of me!

As Rufe finished this with a mighty

, he was obliged to pause for breath. He stared about, gaspily. The afternoon was waning. The mountains close at hand were a darker green. The distant ranges had assumed a rosy amethystine tint, like nothing earthly - like the mountains of a dream, perhaps. The buzzard had alighted in the top of a tree not far down the slope, a tree long ago lightning-scathed, but still rising, gaunt and scarred, above all the forest, and stretching dead stark arms to heaven. Somehow Rufe did not like the looks of it. He was aware of a revulsion of feeling, of the ebbing away of his merry spirit before he saw more.

As he tried to sing: -

I war the mightiest hunter that ever ye see

Till that thar catamount tuk arter me! -

his tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth.

He could see something under that tree which no one else could see, not even from the summit of the crags, for the tree was beyond a projecting slope, and out of the range of vision thence.

Rufe could not make out distinctly what the object was, but it was evidently foreign to the place. He possessed the universal human weakness of regarding everything with a personal application. It now seemed strange to him that he should have come here at all; stranger still, that he should have mounted this queer relic of days so long gone by, and thus discovered that peculiar object under the dead tree. He began to think he had been led here for a purpose. Now Rufe was not so good a boy as to be on the continual lookout for rewards of merit. On the contrary, the day of reckoning meant with him the day of punishment. He had heard recounted an unpleasant superstition that when the red sunsets were flaming round the western mountains, and the valleys were dark and drear, and the abysses and gorges gloomed full of witches and weird spirits, Satan himself might be descried, walking the crags, and spitting fire, and deporting himself generally in such a manner as to cause great apprehension to a small person who could remember so many sins as Rufe could. His sins! they trooped up before his mental vision now, and in a dense convocation crowded the encompassing wilderness.

Rufe felt that he must not leave this matter in uncertainty. He must know whether that strange object under the tree could be intended as a warning to him to cease in time his evil ways - tormenting Towse, pulling Tennessee’s hair, shirking the woodpile, and squandering Birt’s rifle balls. He even feared this might be a notification that the hour of retribution had already come!

He scuttled off the platform, and began to swing himself from bough to bough. He was nervous and less expert than when he had climbed up the tree. He lost his grip once, and crashed from one branch to another, scratching himself handsomely in the operation. The owl, emboldened by his retreat, flew awkwardly down upon the scaffold, and perched there, its head turned askew, and its great, round eyes fixed solemnly upon him.

Suddenly a wild hoot of derision rent the air; the echoes answered, and all the ravine was filled with the jeering clamor.

“The wust luck in the worl’!” plained poor Rufe, as the ill-omened cry rose again and again. “‘Tain’t goin’ ter s’prise me none now, ef I gits my neck bruk along o’ this resky foolishness in this cur’ous place whar ow

watch from the lookout ez dead men hev lef’.”

He came down unhurt, however. Then he sidled about a great many times through “the laurel,” for he could not muster courage for a direct approach to the strange object he had descried. The owl still watched him, and bobbed its head and hooted after him. When he drew near the lightning-scathed tree, he paused rooted to the spot, gazing in astonishment, his hat on the back of his tow head, his eyes opened wide, one finger inserted in his mouth in silent deprecation.

For there stood a man dressed in black, and with a dark straw hat on his head. He had gray whiskers, and gleaming spectacles of a mildly surprised expression. He smiled kindly when he saw Rufe. Incongruously enough, he had a hammer in his hand. He was going down the ravine, tapping the rocks with it. And Rufe thought he looked for all the world like some over-grown, demented woodpecker.

As Rufe still stood staring, the old gentleman held out his hand with a cordial gesture.

“Come here, my little man!” he said in a kind voice.

Rufe hesitated. Then he was seized by sudden distrust. Who was this stranger? and why did he call, “Come here!”

Perhaps the fears already uppermost in Rufe’s mind influenced his hasty conclusion. He cast a horrified glance upon the old gentleman in black, a garb of suspicious color to the little mountaineer, who had never seen men clad in aught but the brown jeans habitually worn by the hunters of the range. He remembered, too, the words of an old song that chronicled how alluring were the invitations of Satan, and with a frenzied cry he fled frantically through the laurel.

Away and away he dashed, up steep ascents, down sharp declivities, falling twice or thrice in his haste, but hurting his clothes more than himself.

It was not long before he was in sight of home, and Towse met him at the fence. The feeling between these two was often the reverse of cordial, and as Rufe climbed down from rail to rail, his sullen “Lemme ’lone, now!” was answered by sundry snaps at his heels and a low growl. Not that Towse would really have harmed him - fealty to the family forbade that; but in defense of his ears and tail he thought it best to keep fierce possibilities in Rufe’s contemplation.

Rufe sat down on the floor of the uninclosed passage between the two rooms, his legs dangling over the sparse sprouts of chickweed and clumps of mullein that grew just beneath, for there were no steps, and Towse bounded up and sat upright close beside him. And as he sought to lean on Towse, the dog sought to lean on him.

They both looked out meditatively at the dense and sombre wilderness, upon which this little clearing and humble log-cabin were but meagre suggestions of that strong, full-pulsed humanity that has elsewhere subdued nature, and achieved progress, and preëmpted perfection.

Towse soon shut his eyes, and presently he was nodding. Presumably he dreamed, for once he roused himself to snap at a fly, when there was no fly. Rufe, however, was wide awake, and busily canvassing how to account to Birt for the lack of a message from Nate Griggs, for he would not confess how untrustworthy he had proved himself. As he reflected upon this perplexity, he leaned his throbbing head on his hand, and his attitude expressed a downcast spirit.

This chanced to strike his mother’s attention as she came to the door. She paused and looked keenly at him.

“Them hoss apples ag’in!” she exclaimed, with the voice of accusation. She had no idea of youthful dejection disconnected with the colic.

Rufe was roused to defend himself. “Hain’t teched ’em, now!” he cried, acrimoniously.

“Waal, sometimes ye air sorter loose-jointed in yer jaw, an’ ain’t partic’lar what ye say,” rejoined his mother, politely. “I’ll waste a leetle yerb-tea on ye, ennyhow.”

She started back into the room, and Rufe rose at once. This cruelty should not be practiced upon him, whatever might betide him at the tanyard. He set out at a brisk pace. He had no mind to be long alone in the woods since his strange adventure down the ravine, or he might have hid in the underbrush, as he had often done, until other matters usurped his mother’s medicinal intentions.

When Rufe reached the tanyard, Birt was still at work. He turned and looked eagerly at the juvenile ambassador.

“Did Nate gin ye a word fur me?” he called sonorously, above the clamor of the noisy bark-mill.

“He say he’ll be hyar ter-morrer by sun-up!” piped out Rufe, in a blatant treble.

A lie seemed less reprehensible when he was obliged to labor so conscientiously to make it heard.

And then compunction seized him. He sat down by Tennessee on a pile of bark, and took off his old wool hat to mop the cold perspiration that had started on his head and face. He felt sick, and sad, and extremely wicked, - a sorry contrast to Birt, who was so honest and reliable and, as his mother always said, “ez stiddy ez the mounting.” Birt was beginning to unharness the mule, for the day’s work was at an end.

The dusk had deepened to darkness. The woods were full of gloom. A timorous star palpitated in the sky. In the sudden stillness when the bark-mill ceased its whir, the mountain torrent hard by lifted a mystic chant. The drone of the katydid vibrated in the laurel, and the shrill-voiced cricket chirped. Two of the men were in the shed examining a green hide by the light of a perforated tin lantern, that seemed to spill the rays in glinting white rills. As they flickered across the pile of bark where Rufe and Tennessee were sitting, he noticed how alert Birt looked, how bright his eyes were.

For Birt’s hopes were suddenly renewed. He thought that some mischance had detained Nate to-day, and that he would come to-morrow to work at the bark-mill.

The boy’s blood tingled at the prospect of being free to seek for treasure down the ravine. He began to feel that he had been too quick to distrust his friend. Perhaps the stipulation that Nate should not go to the ravine until the work commenced was more than he ought to have asked. And perhaps, too, the trespasser was not Nate! The traces of shallow delving might have been left by another hand. Birt paused reflectively in unharnessing the mule. He stood with the gear in one hand, serious and anxious, in view of the possibility that this discovery was not his alone.

Then he strove to cast aside the thought. He said to himself that he had been hasty in concluding that the slight excavation argued human presence in that lonely spot; a rock dislodged and rolling heavily down the gorge might have thus scraped into the sand and gravel; or perhaps some burrowing animal, prospecting for winter quarters, had begun to dig a hole under the bowlder.

He was perplexed, despite his plausible reasoning, and he continued silent and preoccupied when he lifted Tennessee to his shoulder and trudged off homeward, with Rufe at his heels, and the small boy’s conscience following sturdily in the rear.

That sternly accusing conscience! Rufe was dismayed, when he sat with the other laughing children about the table, to know that his soul was not merry. Sometimes a sombre shadow fell upon his face, and once Birt asked him what was the matter. And though he laughed more than ever, he felt it was very hard to be gay without the subtle essence of mirth. That lie! - it seemed to grow; before supper was over it was as big as the warping-bars, and when they all sat in a semicircle in the open passage, Rufe felt that his conscience was the most prominent member of the party. The young moon sank; the night waxed darker still; the woods murmured mysteriously. And he was glad enough at last to be sent to bed, where after so long a time sleep found him.

The morrow came in a cloud. The light lacked the sunshine. The listless air lacked the wind. Still and sombre, the woods touched the murky, motionless sky. All the universe seemed to hold a sullen pause. Time was afoot - it always is - but Birt might not know how it sped; no shadows on the spent tan this dark day! Over his shoulder he was forever glancing, hoping that Nate would presently appear from the woods. He saw only the mists lurking in the laurel; they had autumnal presage and a chill presence. He buttoned his coat about him, and the old mule sneezed as he jogged round the bark-mill.

Jubal Perkins and a crony stood smoking much of the time to-day in the door of the house, looking idly out upon the brown stretch of spent bark, and the gray, weather-beaten sheds, and the dun sky, and the shadowy, mist-veiled woods. The tanner was a tall, muscular man, clad in brown jeans, and with boots of a fair grade of leather drawn high over his trousers. As he often remarked, “The tanyard owes

good foot-gear - ef the rest o’ the mounting hev ter go barefoot.” The expression of his face was somewhat masked by a heavy grizzled beard, but from beneath the wide brim of his hat his eyes peered out with a jocose twinkle. His mouth seemed chiefly useful as a receptacle for his pipe-stem, for he spoke through his nose. His voice was strident on the air, since he included in the conversation a workman in the shed, who was scraping with a two-handled knife a hide spread on a wooden horse. This man, whose name was Andrew Byers, glanced up now and then, elevating a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and settled the affairs of the nation with diligence and despatch, little hindered by his labors or the distance.

Birt took no heed of the loud drawling talk. In moody silence he drove the mule around and around the bark-mill. The patient old animal, being in no danger of losing his way, closed his eyes drowsily as he trudged, making the best of it.

“I’ll git ez mild-mannered an’ meek-hearted ez this hyar old beastis, some day, ef things keep on ez disapp’intin’ ez they hev been lately,” thought Birt, miserably. “They do say ez even he used ter be a turrible kicker.”

Noon came and went, and still the mists hung in the forest closely engirdling the little clearing. The roofs glistened with moisture, and the eaves dripped. A crow was cawing somewhere. Birt had paused to let the mule rest, and the raucous sound caused him to turn his head. His heart gave a bound when he saw that on the other side of the fence the underbrush was astir along the path which wound through the woods to the tanyard. Somebody was coming; he hoped even yet that it might be Nate. He eagerly watched the rustling boughs. The crow had flown, but he heard as he waited a faint “caw! caw!” in the misty distance. Whoever the newcomer might be, he certainly loitered. At last the leaves parted, and revealed - Rufe.

Birt’s first sensation was renewed disappointment. Then he was disposed to investigate the mystery of Nate’s non-appearance.

“Hello, Rufe!” he called out, as soon as the small boy was inside the tanyard, “be you-uns

ez Nate said he’d come over by sun-up?”

Rufe halted and gazed about him, endeavoring to conjure an expression of surprise into his freckled face. He even opened his mouth to exhibit astonishment - exhibiting chiefly that equivocal tongue, and a large assortment of jagged squirrel teeth.

“Hain’t Nate come yit?” he ventured.

The tanner suddenly put into the conversation.

“War it Nate Griggs ez ye war aimin’ ter trade with ter take yer place wunst in a while in the tanyard?”

Birt assented. “An’ he ’lowed he’d be hyar ter-day by sun-up. Rufe brung that word from him yestiddy.”

Rufe’s conscience had given him a recess, during which he had consumed several horse-apples in considerable complacence and a total disregard of “yerb tea.” He had climbed a tree, and sampled a green persimmon, and he endured with fortitude the pucker in his mouth, since it enabled him to make such faces at Towse as caused the dog to snap and growl in a frenzy of surprised indignation. He had fashioned a corn-stalk fiddle - that instrument so dear to rural children! - and he had been sawing away on it to his own satisfaction and Tennessee’s unbounded admiration for the last half-hour. He had forgotten that pursuing conscience till it seized upon him again in the tanyard.

“Oh, Birt,” he quavered out, suddenly, “I hain’t laid eyes on Nate.”

Birt exclaimed indignantly, and Jubal Perkins laughed.

“I seen sech a cur’ous lookin’ man, down in the ravine by the lick, ez it sot me all catawampus!” continued Rufe.

As he told of his defection, and the falsehood with which he had accounted for it, Jubal Perkins came to a sudden decision.

“Git on that thar mule, Birt, an’ ride over ter Nate’s, an’ find out what ails him, ef so be ye hanker ter know. I don’t want nobody workin’ in this hyar tanyard ez looks ez mournful ez ye do - like ez ef ye hed been buried an’ dug up. But hurry back, ’kase there ain’t enough bark ground yit, an’ I hev got other turns o’ work I want ye ter do besides ’fore dark.”