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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf’s Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolf’s Head
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23549]
+Last Updated: December 19, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF’S HEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOLF’S HEAD
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of
+dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling
+torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their
+savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,--the panther, the bear, the
+catamount, the wolf,--and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both
+fearsome and afraid, the man with a “wolf’s head,” on which was set a
+price, even as the State’s bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
+
+One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had
+pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement
+on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of
+being summoned to serve on a sheriff’s posse in the discharge of the
+grimmest of duties.
+
+“But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has
+survived, but the fact is obsolete,” said Seymour, who was both a prig
+and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain
+of his sylvan accomplishments. “Our law places no man beyond the pale
+of its protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in
+court.”
+
+“What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy
+that privilege--five hundred dollars?” asked Bygrave, who was a
+newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.
+
+“Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive.” Purcell’s
+vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination
+of chances and relative values. “Therefore he is as definitely _caput
+lupinum_ as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for
+cracking his ‘wolf’s head’ off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake
+of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive
+to live!”
+
+“Jes by his rifle, I reckon,” replied the rural gossip whom intrusive
+curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. “Though sence that thar
+big reward hev been n’ised abroad, I’d think he’d be plumb afraid ter
+fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days.”
+
+The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect,
+despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved,
+narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high
+forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back
+of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to
+the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened
+by his persistent, rasping chirp.
+
+“That’s what frets Meddy; she can’t abide the idee of huntin’ a human
+with sech special coursers ez money reward. She ‘lows it mought tempt
+a’ evil man or a’ ignorant one ter swear a miser’ble wretch’s life
+away. Let the law strengthen its own hands--that’s what Meddy say. Don’t
+kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother’s breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb
+comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin’, though it’s all on account of
+that thar man what war growed up in a tree.”
+
+The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour’s
+mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint
+rural perversion of the legend.
+
+But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the
+question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the
+ground about it and idly listened.
+
+“One day--‘t war ‘bout two year’ ago--thar war a valley-man up hyar
+a-huntin’ in the mountings with some other fellers, an’ toward sunset
+he war a-waitin’ at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
+hopin’ ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
+luck war ag’in’ him, fer he got nuthin’ but durned tired. So, ez he
+waited, he grounded his rifle, an’ leaned himself ag’in’ a great big
+tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his
+head, an’, folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek,
+he looked into a skellington’s eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington’s
+grisly face peerin’ at him through a crack in the bark.”
+
+The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent
+in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had
+bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous
+strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal
+air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on
+the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above
+the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity
+of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid
+vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively
+at it as he resumed:
+
+“Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez
+skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till
+he reached Colbury, an’ thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk
+a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn’t grow on trees
+spontaneous, an’ he hed an official interes’ in human relics out o’
+place. So he kem,--the tree is ‘twixt hyar an’ my house thar on the
+rise,--an’, folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off ‘n the face
+of the yearth, hid out from the law,--that’s the way Meddy takes it,--he
+hed clomb the tree, an’ it bein’ holler, he drapped down inside it,
+thinkin’ o’ course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It
+monght hev been deeper ‘n he calculated, or mo’ narrow, but he couldn’t
+make the rise. He died still strugglin’, fer his long, bony fingers war
+gripped in the wood--it’s rotted a deal sence then.”
+
+“Who was the man?” asked Seymour.
+
+“Nobody knows,--nobody keers ‘cept’ Meddy. She hev wep’ a bushel o’
+tears about him. The cor’ner ‘lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
+rifle he hed with him that it mus’ hev happened nigh a hunderd years
+ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin’ on that of a winter night, an’ how
+the woman that keered fer him mus’ hev watched an’ waited fer him, an’
+‘lowed he war deceitful an’ de-sertin’, an’ mebbe held a gredge agin
+him, whilst he war dyin’ so pitiful an’ helpless, walled up in that
+tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an’ mighty nigh cry her eyes out.
+He warn’t even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air
+partic’lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot.” Old Kettison glanced
+about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face
+distended in a mocking grin.
+
+“A horrible fate!” exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
+
+“Edzac’ly,” the old mountaineer assented easily.
+
+“What’s her name--Meggy?” asked the journalist, with a mechanical
+aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
+
+“Naw; Meddy--short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox;
+but I reckon every livin’ soul hev forgot’ it but me. She is jes
+Meddlesome by name, an’ meddlesome by natur’.”
+
+He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant
+mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the
+sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
+
+“That mus’ be Meddy now,” he commented, “with her salt-risin’ bread. She
+lowed she war goin’ ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol’ her you-uns war
+lackin’.”
+
+For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
+store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower;
+the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was
+the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a
+load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had
+returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who
+had not yet arrived. Purcell’s boast that he could bake ash-cake proved
+a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds
+on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff
+of life.
+
+Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant’s favor as she appeared,
+and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
+middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as
+she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to
+a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown
+lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well
+with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short
+waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the
+immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity
+since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of
+which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her
+throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands,
+and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown,
+and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but
+distinct tracery of bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she
+might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with
+the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied
+expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were
+full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between
+her eye-brows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing.
+Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not
+even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had
+brought and placed beside the camp-fire.
+
+“Don’t, Gran’dad,” she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly
+forward--“_don’t_ put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box ‘pears
+ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It’ll
+eat shorter then, bein’ fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer
+supper,”--dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the
+basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,--“I baked
+some dodgers, too--four, six, eight, ten,”--she was counting a dozen
+golden-brown cates of delectable aspect--“knowin’ they would hone fer
+cornmeal arter huntin’, an’ nuthin’ else nohow air fitten ter eat with
+feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs!” She sprang up, and, standing
+on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly
+she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. “Thar ‘s ants in yer
+short-sweetenin’! How _could_ you-uns let sechez that happen!”
+
+“Oh, surely not,” exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact
+could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
+
+Meddlesome’s unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic
+concerns disclosed other shortcomings. “Why n’t ye keep the top on yer
+coffee-can? Don’t ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin’ open?” She
+repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: “We-uns
+ain’t got no short-sweetenin’ at our house, but I’ll send my leetle
+brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin’ fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
+Sol,”--addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
+ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
+supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,--“run
+ter the house an’ fetch the sorghum-jug.”
+
+As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly
+called out in a frenzy of warning: “Go the other way, Sol--up through
+the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife.”
+
+Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
+precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger.
+Being unhurt, he was resentful’ “They ain’t none o’ _yer_ feet, nohow,”
+ he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
+
+“Oh, yes, Sol,” said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and
+the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome’s iron rule. “Everything
+belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, ‘ca’se she jes makes it
+hern. So take keer of _yer_ feet for _her_ sake.” He turned toward her
+jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. “I jes
+been tellin’ these hunter-men, Meddy, ‘bout how ye sets yerself even
+ter meddle with other folkses’ mourning--what they got through with a
+hunderd year’ ago--tormentatin’ ‘bout that thar man what war starved in
+the tree.”
+
+She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation
+of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather
+that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would
+seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots
+on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her
+action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more
+lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial
+subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
+
+Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky.
+He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections,
+and the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one
+suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now
+swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should
+his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum
+might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond
+the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place
+for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry
+clothes.
+
+“Poor Sol!” she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
+between possibility and accomplished fact. “I’ll fetch the jug myself.
+I’ll take the short cut an’ head him.”
+
+Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
+tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
+flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
+reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
+mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing
+it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and
+after a moment’s hesitation, she was springing from one to another of
+the great, half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent
+crystal-brown water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More
+than once, to evade the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the
+continuous roar, she stood still in midstream and gazed upward or at the
+opposite bank. The woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow
+and variant russet and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was
+impenetrable. The great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted
+sharply with the white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and
+sycamore and poplar, and, thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost
+illimitable avenues of sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of
+willows on the opposite bank, at the waters-edge, a spring, a circular,
+rock-bound reservoir; in the marshy margin she could see the imprints of
+the cleft hoofs of deer, and thence ran the indefinite trail known as
+a deer-path. The dense covert along the steep slope was a famous
+“deer-stand,” and there many a fine buck had been killed. All at once
+she was reminded of the storied tree hard by, the tragedy of which she
+had often bewept.
+
+There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing
+of so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of
+a last-year’s storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre
+of the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures
+that the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these--she thought
+herself in a dream--a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as
+suddenly vanished!
+
+Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat She
+wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
+rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a
+muscular instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
+self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze
+at the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
+discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
+mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief
+so great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less
+poignant than the original shock when she realized that this face
+was not the grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence
+heretofore, but was clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive.
+Once more, as she gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure,
+and in that instant a glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand
+appeared,--beckoning her to approach.
+
+It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
+this was the fugitive, the “wolf’s head,” and should she turn to flee,
+he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would
+fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward.
+Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to
+find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision;
+though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and
+made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was
+she who spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her
+arm that all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had
+induced his disclosure of his identity.
+
+“It’s empty,” she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch,
+and asked wonderingly, “Is game skeerce?”
+
+His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. “Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,”
+ he replied with a bitter laugh.
+
+There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the
+riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. “Ye
+hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide,” she admonished him. “This tree
+is a plumb cur’osity. Gran’dad Kettison war tellin’ some camp-hunters
+‘bout’n it jes this evenin’. Like ez not they’ll kem ter view it.”
+
+His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
+a-smoulder. “Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!” he moaned wretchedly.
+
+Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. “Ye oughter hev
+remembered the Lawd ‘fore ye done it,” she said, with a repellent
+impulse; then she would have given much to recall the reproach. The man
+was desperate; his safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure
+it, and anger would limber the trigger.
+
+But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
+bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. “Done
+what?” he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not
+reply, he spoke for her. “The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn’t even
+thar. I knowed nuthin’ ‘bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my
+hope, I warn’t even thar.”
+
+She stood astounded. “Then why n’t ye leave it ter men?”
+
+“I can’t _prove_ it ag’in’ the murderers’ oaths. I had been consarned
+in the moonshinin’ that ended in murder, but _I_ hed not been nigh the
+still fer a month,--I war out a-huntin’--when the revenuers made the
+raid. There war a scrimmage ‘twixt the raiders an’ the distillers, an’
+an outsider that hed nuthin’ ter do with the Federal law--he war the
+constable o’ the deestrick, an’ jes rid with the gang ter see the fun
+or ter show them the way--he war killed. An’ account o’ _him_, the State
+law kem into the game. Them other moonshiners war captured, an’ they
+swore ag’in’ me ‘bout the shootin’ ter save tharselves, but I hearn thar
+false oaths hev done them no good, they being held as accessory. An’ I
+be so ez I can’t prove an alibi--I can’t _prove_ it, though it’s God’s
+truth. But before high heaven”--he lifted his gaunt right hand--“I am
+innercent, I am inner-cent.”
+
+She could not have said why,--perhaps she realized afterward,--but
+she believed him absolutely, implicitly. A fervor of sympathy for his
+plight, of commiseration, surged up in her heart. “I wisht it war so I
+could gin ye some pervisions,” she sighed, “though ye do ‘pear toler’ble
+triflin’ ter lack game.”
+
+Then the dread secret was told. “Gal,”--he used the word as a polite
+form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated “lady,”--“ef
+ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca’tridge lef’,
+not a dust of powder.”
+
+Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry
+of dismay.
+
+“I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall. My knife-blade is bruk,
+but I reckon thar is enough lef’ ter split my jugular whenst the eend is
+kem at last.”
+
+The girl suddenly caught her faculties together. “What sorter fool talk
+is that!” she demanded sternly.’ “Ye do my bid, ef ye knows what’s good
+fer ye. Git out’n this trap of a tree an’ hide ‘mongst the crevices
+of the rocks till seben o ‘clock ternight. Then kem up ter Gran’dad
+Kettison’s whenst it is cleverly dark an’ tap on the glass winder--not
+on the batten shutter. An’ I’ll hev cartridges an’ powder an’ ball for
+ye’ an’ some victuals ready, too.”
+
+But the fugitive, despite his straits, demurred. “I don’t want ter git
+old man Kettison into trouble for lendin’ ter me.”
+
+“‘T ain’t his’n. ‘T is my dad’s old buckshot ca’tridges an’ powder an’
+ball. They belong ter me. The other childern is my half-brothers, bein’
+my mother war married twice. Ye kin _steal_ this gear from me, ef that
+will make ye feel easier.”
+
+“But what will yer gran’dad say ter me?” “He won’t know who ye be; he
+will jes ‘low ye air one o’ the boys who air always foolin’ away thar
+time visitin’ me an’ makin’ tallow-dips skeerce.” The sudden gleam
+of mirth on her face was like an illuminating burst of sunshine, and
+somehow it cast an irradiation into the heart of the fugitive, for,
+after she was gone out of sight, he pondered upon it.
+
+But the early dusk fell from a lowering sky, and the night came on
+beclouded and dark. Some turbulent spirit was loosed in the air, and the
+wind was wild. Great, surging masses of purple vapor came in a mad rout
+from the dank west and gathered above the massive and looming mountains.
+The woods bent and tossed and clashed their boughs in the riot, of
+gusts, the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began
+to fall. The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the
+broad, pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines,
+an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam
+rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage,
+tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed,
+the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way
+along the bridle-path that led to old Kettison’s house.
+
+The rude comfort of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason
+of the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening
+fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a
+source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in
+admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem
+unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory flames, red
+and yellow, was streaming from the great chimney-place, and before
+the broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their outstretched boots
+steaming in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried
+herbs, gourds of varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters.
+The old man’s gay, senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife,
+a type of comely rustic age, who made much of the fact that, though
+housebound from “rheumatics,” she had reared her dead daughter’s “two
+orphin famblies,” the said daughter having married twice, neither man
+“bein’ of a lastin’ quality,” as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, “the
+eldest fambly,” had been guide, philosopher, and friend to the swarm
+of youngsters, and even now, in the interests of peace and space and
+hearing, was seeking to herd them into an adjoining room, when a sudden
+stentorian hail from without rang through the splashing of the rain from
+the eaves, the crash of thunder among the “balds” of the mountains, with
+its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging of the wind.
+
+“Light a tallow-dip, Meddy,” cried old Kettison, excitedly. “An’ fetch
+the candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech
+a night ‘fore we bid ‘em ter light an’ hitch.”
+
+But these were travelers not to be gainsaid--the sheriff of the county
+and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his aid as
+a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises. However,
+the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the influence of
+a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, “strong enough to walk
+from here to Colbury,” according to the sheriff’s appreciative phrase.
+He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant of his burly head
+and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His hair stood up in
+two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he had large, round,
+grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To Meddy, staring
+horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked while he
+explained the object of his expedition.
+
+“This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison.
+Here is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a
+reward for five hundred dollars out for his arrest.”
+
+“That’s Boy’s fault, Sher’ff, not our’n,” leered the glib old man. He,
+too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. “Boy’s in no wise
+sociable.”
+
+“It’s plumb flying in the face of the law,” declared the officer. “If
+I had a guide, I’d not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man
+whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me
+here,--what’s his name!--yes, Smith, Barton Smith,--who will guide us to
+where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive.” he added with an
+inflection of doubt.
+
+Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful
+sequelae. Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note,
+silently sulked under the officer’s intimation that, being able-bodied
+men, he would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of
+his county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse
+to aid the law. Bygrave, however, realized a “story” in the air, and
+Seymour was interested in the impending developments; for being a close
+observer, he had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some
+tumultuous though covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in
+her cheeks; her eyes were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain
+whirled. To her the crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her
+unwarranted interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek
+to command the march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish
+maneuvering had lured this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish,
+and death. No warning could he have; the window was opaque with the
+corrugations of the rainfall on the streaming panes, and set too high
+to afford him a glimpse from without. And, oh, how he would despise
+the traitor that she must needs seem to be! She had not a moment for
+reflection, for counsel, for action. Already the signal,--he was prompt
+at the tryst,--the sharp, crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!
+
+The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes
+characterizing portly men. “There he is now!” he exclaimed.
+
+But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
+door. “Barton Smith!” she exclaimed, with shrill significance. “Hyar is
+yer guide, Sher’ff, wet ez a drownded rat.”
+
+The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
+flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement.
+For a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with
+his suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
+discriminate the powers of the dramatis personæ.
+
+“Now, my man, step lively,” said the officer in his big, husky voice.
+“Do you know this Royston McGurny?”
+
+To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and
+the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as
+to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch
+at the door, mustering his courage, replied: “Know Royston McGurny! None
+better. Knowed him all my life.”
+
+“Got pretty good horse?”
+
+“Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison’s.”
+
+“I’ll go show ye whar the saddle be,” exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted
+officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme.
+Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without,
+whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape
+before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the
+possibility. But, no,--and he doubted anew all his suspicions,--in
+a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that
+pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine
+group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her
+gown, showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red
+plaid shawl adjusted over her head and shoulders.
+
+“Gran’dad,” she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her mouth
+full of pins, “Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt Drusina’s
+house. Ye know she be ailin’, an’ sent for me this evenin’; but I hed no
+way ter go.”
+
+The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
+imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need
+of hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
+
+There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy
+of the storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little
+cavalcade got to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun
+shadows and dim yellow flare of light from open door and window. One
+of the mounts had burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from
+the plow-gear in the shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and
+plunged at the lights, and could not be induced to cross the illuminated
+bar thrown athwart the yard from the open door. The official impatience
+of the delay was expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but
+throughout the interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face,
+sat motionless in his saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt
+presentment of indifference, while, perched behind him, Meddy was
+continually busy in readjusting her skirts or shawl or a small bundle
+that presumably contained her rustic finery, but which, to a close
+approach, would have disclosed the sulphurous odor of gunpowder. When
+the cluster of horsemen was fairly on the march, however, she sat quite
+still, and more than once Seymour noted that, with her face close to
+the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering in his ear. What was their
+garnet he marvelled, having once projected the idea that this late comer
+was, himself, the “wolf’s head” whom they were to chase down for a rich
+reward, incongruously hunting amidst his own hue and cry. Or, Seymour
+again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of a scheme from his
+own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed,
+after all, scant communication between the two, and this was even less
+when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds
+falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with
+an incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the
+sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they
+went at first, but presently they were following through bosky recesses
+a deer-path, winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning
+foliage let in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles
+stood in sheeny silver illumination. The drops of moisture glittered
+jewel-wise on the dark boughs of fir and pine, and one could even
+discriminate the red glow of sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory,
+so well were the chromatic harmonies asserted in this refined and
+refulgent glamour.
+
+“Barton Smith!” called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party.
+There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold.
+His conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his
+suspicion?
+
+“Smith! _Smith_” cried the irascible officer. “Hey, there! Is the man
+deaf!”
+
+“Not deef, edzac’ly,” Meddlesome’s voice sounded reproachfully; “jes a
+leetle hard o’ hear in’.” She had administered a warning nudge.
+
+“Hey? What ye want?” said the “Wolf’s Head,” suddenly checking his
+horse.
+
+“Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?” demanded the
+officer, sternly.
+
+“Just acrost the gorge,” the guide answered easily.
+
+“I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned
+from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in.”
+
+“That tree? It’s away back yander,” observed one of the posse, reluctant
+and disaffected.
+
+“Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now,” said the
+guide.
+
+“Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told,” said the sheriff,
+discontentedly; “but this is a long ja’nt. Ride up! Ride up!”
+
+Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were
+blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths
+were diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,--such
+tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path
+threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above
+which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints,
+was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a
+mere gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas
+across the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods
+filled with moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which
+differentiates its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour
+‘of cultivated Scenes--something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a
+meaning addressed to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or
+words express.
+
+With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the
+saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were
+gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It
+was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by
+slight standards.
+
+“Have we got to cross this?” asked the officer, still in the saddle and
+gazing downward.
+
+“Ef ye foller me,” said the guide, indifferently.
+
+But he was ahead of his orders. He visibly braced his nerves for the
+effort, and holding his rifle as a balancing-pole, he sped along the
+light span with a tread as deft as a fox or a wolf. In a moment he had
+gained the farther side.
+
+They scarcely knew how it happened. So unexpected was the event that,
+though it occurred before their eyes, they did not seem to see it. They
+remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one
+single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the
+log, heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went
+crashing down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell,
+sufficing to wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth
+and rock from the verge of the precipice.
+
+The horses sprang back snorting and frightened; the officer’s, being a
+fine animal in prime condition, tried to bolt. Before he had him well
+in hand again, the man on the opposite brink had vanished. The sheriff’s
+suspicions were barely astir when a hallooing voice in the rear made
+itself heard, and a horseman, breathless with haste, his steed flecked
+with foam, rode up, indignant, flushed, and eager.
+
+“Whyn’t ye wait for me, Sher’ff? Ye air all on the wrong track,” he
+cried. “Boyston McGurny be hid in the skellington’s tree. I glimpsed him
+thar myself, an’ gin information.”
+
+The sheriff gazed down with averse and suspicious eyes. “What’s all
+this!” he said sternly. “Give an account of yourself.”
+
+“Me!” exclaimed the man in amazement. “Why, I’m Barton Smith, yer guide,
+that’s who. An’ I’m good for five hundred dollars’ reward.”
+
+But the sheriff called off the pursuit for the time, as he had no means
+of replacing the bridge or of crossing the chasm.
+
+Meddlesome’s share in the escape was not detected, and for a while she
+had no incentive to the foolhardiness of boasting. But her prudence
+diminished when the reward for the apprehension of Boyston McGurny was
+suddenly withdrawn. The confession of one of the distillers, dying of
+tuberculosis contracted in prison, who had himself fired the fatal shot,
+had established the alibi that McGurny claimed, and served to relieve
+him of all suspicion.
+
+He eventually became a “herder” of cattle on the bald of the mountain
+and a farmer in a small way, and in these placid pursuits he found a
+contented existence. But, occasionally, a crony of his olden time would
+contrast the profits of this tame industry at a disadvantage with the
+quick and large returns of the “wild cat,” when he would “confess and
+avoid.”
+
+“That’s true, that’s all true; but a man can’t holp it no ways in the
+world whenst he hev got a wife that is so out-an’-out meddlesome that
+she won’t let him run ag’in’ the law, nohow he kin fix it.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf’s Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolf's Head
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23549]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF'S HEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOLF'S HEAD
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of
+dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling
+torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their
+savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,--the panther, the bear, the
+catamount, the wolf,--and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both
+fearsome and afraid, the man with a "wolf's head," on which was set a
+price, even as the State's bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
+
+One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had
+pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement
+on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of
+being summoned to serve on a sheriff's posse in the discharge of the
+grimmest of duties.
+
+"But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has
+survived, but the fact is obsolete," said Seymour, who was both a prig
+and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain
+of his sylvan accomplishments. "Our law places no man beyond the pale
+of its protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in
+court."
+
+"What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy
+that privilege--five hundred dollars?" asked Bygrave, who was a
+newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.
+
+"Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive." Purcell's
+vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination
+of chances and relative values. "Therefore he is as definitely _caput
+lupinum_ as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for
+cracking his 'wolf's head' off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake
+of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive
+to live!"
+
+"Jes by his rifle, I reckon," replied the rural gossip whom intrusive
+curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. "Though sence that thar
+big reward hev been n'ised abroad, I'd think he'd be plumb afraid ter
+fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days."
+
+The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect,
+despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved,
+narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high
+forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back
+of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to
+the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened
+by his persistent, rasping chirp.
+
+"That's what frets Meddy; she can't abide the idee of huntin' a human
+with sech special coursers ez money reward. She 'lows it mought tempt
+a' evil man or a' ignorant one ter swear a miser'ble wretch's life
+away. Let the law strengthen its own hands--that's what Meddy say. Don't
+kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother's breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb
+comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of
+that thar man what war growed up in a tree."
+
+The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's
+mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint
+rural perversion of the legend.
+
+But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the
+question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the
+ground about it and idly listened.
+
+"One day--'t war 'bout two year' ago--thar war a valley-man up hyar
+a-huntin' in the mountings with some other fellers, an' toward sunset
+he war a-waitin' at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
+hopin' ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
+luck war ag'in' him, fer he got nuthin' but durned tired. So, ez he
+waited, he grounded his rifle, an' leaned himself ag'in' a great big
+tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his
+head, an', folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek,
+he looked into a skellington's eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington's
+grisly face peerin' at him through a crack in the bark."
+
+The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent
+in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had
+bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous
+strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal
+air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on
+the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above
+the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity
+of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid
+vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively
+at it as he resumed:
+
+"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez
+skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till
+he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk
+a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees
+spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o'
+place. So he kem,--the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the
+rise,--an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off 'n the face
+of the yearth, hid out from the law,--that's the way Meddy takes it,--he
+hed clomb the tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it,
+thinkin' o' course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It
+monght hev been deeper 'n he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't
+make the rise. He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war
+gripped in the wood--it's rotted a deal sence then."
+
+"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.
+
+"Nobody knows,--nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o'
+tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
+rifle he hed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years
+ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how
+the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an'
+'lowed he war deceitful an' de-sertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin
+him, whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that
+tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out.
+He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air
+partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced
+about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face
+distended in a mocking grin.
+
+"A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
+
+"Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer assented easily.
+
+"What's her name--Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical
+aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
+
+"Naw; Meddy--short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox;
+but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes
+Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."
+
+He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant
+mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the
+sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
+
+"That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She
+lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war
+lackin'."
+
+For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
+store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower;
+the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was
+the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a
+load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had
+returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who
+had not yet arrived. Purcell's boast that he could bake ash-cake proved
+a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds
+on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff
+of life.
+
+Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant's favor as she appeared,
+and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
+middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as
+she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to
+a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown
+lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well
+with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short
+waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the
+immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity
+since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of
+which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her
+throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands,
+and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown,
+and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but
+distinct tracery of bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she
+might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with
+the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied
+expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were
+full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between
+her eye-brows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing.
+Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not
+even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had
+brought and placed beside the camp-fire.
+
+"Don't, Gran'dad," she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly
+forward--"_don't_ put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box 'pears
+ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It'll
+eat shorter then, bein' fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer
+supper,"--dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the
+basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,--"I baked
+some dodgers, too--four, six, eight, ten,"--she was counting a dozen
+golden-brown cates of delectable aspect--"knowin' they would hone fer
+cornmeal arter huntin', an' nuthin' else nohow air fitten ter eat with
+feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs!" She sprang up, and, standing
+on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly
+she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. "Thar 's ants in yer
+short-sweetenin'! How _could_ you-uns let sechez that happen!"
+
+"Oh, surely not," exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact
+could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
+
+Meddlesome's unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic
+concerns disclosed other shortcomings. "Why n't ye keep the top on yer
+coffee-can? Don't ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin' open?" She
+repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: "We-uns
+ain't got no short-sweetenin' at our house, but I'll send my leetle
+brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin' fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
+Sol,"--addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
+ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
+supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,--"run
+ter the house an' fetch the sorghum-jug."
+
+As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly
+called out in a frenzy of warning: "Go the other way, Sol--up through
+the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife."
+
+Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
+precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger.
+Being unhurt, he was resentful' "They ain't none o' _yer_ feet, nohow,"
+he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
+
+"Oh, yes, Sol," said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and
+the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything
+belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it
+hern. So take keer of _yer_ feet for _her_ sake." He turned toward her
+jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes
+been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even
+ter meddle with other folkses' mourning--what they got through with a
+hunderd year' ago--tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in
+the tree."
+
+She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation
+of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather
+that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would
+seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots
+on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her
+action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more
+lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial
+subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
+
+Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky.
+He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections,
+and the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one
+suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now
+swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should
+his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum
+might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond
+the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place
+for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry
+clothes.
+
+"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
+between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself.
+I'll take the short cut an' head him."
+
+Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
+tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
+flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
+reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
+mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing
+it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and
+after a moment's hesitation, she was springing from one to another of
+the great, half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent
+crystal-brown water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More
+than once, to evade the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the
+continuous roar, she stood still in midstream and gazed upward or at the
+opposite bank. The woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow
+and variant russet and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was
+impenetrable. The great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted
+sharply with the white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and
+sycamore and poplar, and, thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost
+illimitable avenues of sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of
+willows on the opposite bank, at the waters-edge, a spring, a circular,
+rock-bound reservoir; in the marshy margin she could see the imprints of
+the cleft hoofs of deer, and thence ran the indefinite trail known as
+a deer-path. The dense covert along the steep slope was a famous
+"deer-stand," and there many a fine buck had been killed. All at once
+she was reminded of the storied tree hard by, the tragedy of which she
+had often bewept.
+
+There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing
+of so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of
+a last-year's storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre
+of the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures
+that the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these--she thought
+herself in a dream--a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as
+suddenly vanished!
+
+Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat She
+wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
+rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a
+muscular instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
+self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze
+at the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
+discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
+mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief
+so great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less
+poignant than the original shock when she realized that this face
+was not the grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence
+heretofore, but was clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive.
+Once more, as she gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure,
+and in that instant a glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand
+appeared,--beckoning her to approach.
+
+It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
+this was the fugitive, the "wolf's head," and should she turn to flee,
+he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would
+fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward.
+Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to
+find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision;
+though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and
+made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was
+she who spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her
+arm that all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had
+induced his disclosure of his identity.
+
+"It's empty," she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch,
+and asked wonderingly, "Is game skeerce?"
+
+His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. "Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,"
+he replied with a bitter laugh.
+
+There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the
+riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. "Ye
+hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide," she admonished him. "This tree
+is a plumb cur'osity. Gran'dad Kettison war tellin' some camp-hunters
+'bout'n it jes this evenin'. Like ez not they'll kem ter view it."
+
+His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
+a-smoulder. "Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!" he moaned wretchedly.
+
+Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. "Ye oughter hev
+remembered the Lawd 'fore ye done it," she said, with a repellent
+impulse; then she would have given much to recall the reproach. The man
+was desperate; his safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure
+it, and anger would limber the trigger.
+
+But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
+bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. "Done
+what?" he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not
+reply, he spoke for her. "The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn't even
+thar. I knowed nuthin' 'bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my
+hope, I warn't even thar."
+
+She stood astounded. "Then why n't ye leave it ter men?"
+
+"I can't _prove_ it ag'in' the murderers' oaths. I had been consarned
+in the moonshinin' that ended in murder, but _I_ hed not been nigh the
+still fer a month,--I war out a-huntin'--when the revenuers made the
+raid. There war a scrimmage 'twixt the raiders an' the distillers, an'
+an outsider that hed nuthin' ter do with the Federal law--he war the
+constable o' the deestrick, an' jes rid with the gang ter see the fun
+or ter show them the way--he war killed. An' account o' _him_, the State
+law kem into the game. Them other moonshiners war captured, an' they
+swore ag'in' me 'bout the shootin' ter save tharselves, but I hearn thar
+false oaths hev done them no good, they being held as accessory. An' I
+be so ez I can't prove an alibi--I can't _prove_ it, though it's God's
+truth. But before high heaven"--he lifted his gaunt right hand--"I am
+innercent, I am inner-cent."
+
+She could not have said why,--perhaps she realized afterward,--but
+she believed him absolutely, implicitly. A fervor of sympathy for his
+plight, of commiseration, surged up in her heart. "I wisht it war so I
+could gin ye some pervisions," she sighed, "though ye do 'pear toler'ble
+triflin' ter lack game."
+
+Then the dread secret was told. "Gal,"--he used the word as a polite
+form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated "lady,"--"ef
+ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca'tridge lef',
+not a dust of powder."
+
+Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry
+of dismay.
+
+"I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall. My knife-blade is bruk,
+but I reckon thar is enough lef' ter split my jugular whenst the eend is
+kem at last."
+
+The girl suddenly caught her faculties together. "What sorter fool talk
+is that!" she demanded sternly.' "Ye do my bid, ef ye knows what's good
+fer ye. Git out'n this trap of a tree an' hide 'mongst the crevices
+of the rocks till seben o 'clock ternight. Then kem up ter Gran'dad
+Kettison's whenst it is cleverly dark an' tap on the glass winder--not
+on the batten shutter. An' I'll hev cartridges an' powder an' ball for
+ye' an' some victuals ready, too."
+
+But the fugitive, despite his straits, demurred. "I don't want ter git
+old man Kettison into trouble for lendin' ter me."
+
+"'T ain't his'n. 'T is my dad's old buckshot ca'tridges an' powder an'
+ball. They belong ter me. The other childern is my half-brothers, bein'
+my mother war married twice. Ye kin _steal_ this gear from me, ef that
+will make ye feel easier."
+
+"But what will yer gran'dad say ter me?" "He won't know who ye be; he
+will jes 'low ye air one o' the boys who air always foolin' away thar
+time visitin' me an' makin' tallow-dips skeerce." The sudden gleam
+of mirth on her face was like an illuminating burst of sunshine, and
+somehow it cast an irradiation into the heart of the fugitive, for,
+after she was gone out of sight, he pondered upon it.
+
+But the early dusk fell from a lowering sky, and the night came on
+beclouded and dark. Some turbulent spirit was loosed in the air, and the
+wind was wild. Great, surging masses of purple vapor came in a mad rout
+from the dank west and gathered above the massive and looming mountains.
+The woods bent and tossed and clashed their boughs in the riot, of
+gusts, the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began
+to fall. The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the
+broad, pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines,
+an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam
+rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage,
+tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed,
+the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way
+along the bridle-path that led to old Kettison's house.
+
+The rude comfort of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason
+of the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening
+fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a
+source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in
+admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem
+unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory flames, red
+and yellow, was streaming from the great chimney-place, and before
+the broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their outstretched boots
+steaming in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried
+herbs, gourds of varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters.
+The old man's gay, senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife,
+a type of comely rustic age, who made much of the fact that, though
+housebound from "rheumatics," she had reared her dead daughter's "two
+orphin famblies," the said daughter having married twice, neither man
+"bein' of a lastin' quality," as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, "the
+eldest fambly," had been guide, philosopher, and friend to the swarm
+of youngsters, and even now, in the interests of peace and space and
+hearing, was seeking to herd them into an adjoining room, when a sudden
+stentorian hail from without rang through the splashing of the rain from
+the eaves, the crash of thunder among the "balds" of the mountains, with
+its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging of the wind.
+
+"Light a tallow-dip, Meddy," cried old Kettison, excitedly. "An' fetch
+the candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech
+a night 'fore we bid 'em ter light an' hitch."
+
+But these were travelers not to be gainsaid--the sheriff of the county
+and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his aid as
+a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises. However,
+the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the influence of
+a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, "strong enough to walk
+from here to Colbury," according to the sheriff's appreciative phrase.
+He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant of his burly head
+and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His hair stood up in
+two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he had large, round,
+grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To Meddy, staring
+horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked while he
+explained the object of his expedition.
+
+"This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison.
+Here is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a
+reward for five hundred dollars out for his arrest."
+
+"That's Boy's fault, Sher'ff, not our'n," leered the glib old man. He,
+too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. "Boy's in no wise
+sociable."
+
+"It's plumb flying in the face of the law," declared the officer. "If
+I had a guide, I'd not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man
+whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me
+here,--what's his name!--yes, Smith, Barton Smith,--who will guide us to
+where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive." he added with an
+inflection of doubt.
+
+Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful
+sequelae. Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note,
+silently sulked under the officer's intimation that, being able-bodied
+men, he would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of
+his county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse
+to aid the law. Bygrave, however, realized a "story" in the air, and
+Seymour was interested in the impending developments; for being a close
+observer, he had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some
+tumultuous though covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in
+her cheeks; her eyes were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain
+whirled. To her the crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her
+unwarranted interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek
+to command the march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish
+maneuvering had lured this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish,
+and death. No warning could he have; the window was opaque with the
+corrugations of the rainfall on the streaming panes, and set too high
+to afford him a glimpse from without. And, oh, how he would despise
+the traitor that she must needs seem to be! She had not a moment for
+reflection, for counsel, for action. Already the signal,--he was prompt
+at the tryst,--the sharp, crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!
+
+The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes
+characterizing portly men. "There he is now!" he exclaimed.
+
+But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
+door. "Barton Smith!" she exclaimed, with shrill significance. "Hyar is
+yer guide, Sher'ff, wet ez a drownded rat."
+
+The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
+flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement.
+For a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with
+his suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
+discriminate the powers of the dramatis person�.
+
+"Now, my man, step lively," said the officer in his big, husky voice.
+"Do you know this Royston McGurny?"
+
+To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and
+the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as
+to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch
+at the door, mustering his courage, replied: "Know Royston McGurny! None
+better. Knowed him all my life."
+
+"Got pretty good horse?"
+
+"Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison's."
+
+"I'll go show ye whar the saddle be," exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted
+officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme.
+Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without,
+whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape
+before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the
+possibility. But, no,--and he doubted anew all his suspicions,--in
+a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that
+pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine
+group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her
+gown, showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red
+plaid shawl adjusted over her head and shoulders.
+
+"Gran'dad," she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her mouth
+full of pins, "Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt Drusina's
+house. Ye know she be ailin', an' sent for me this evenin'; but I hed no
+way ter go."
+
+The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
+imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need
+of hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
+
+There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy
+of the storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little
+cavalcade got to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun
+shadows and dim yellow flare of light from open door and window. One
+of the mounts had burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from
+the plow-gear in the shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and
+plunged at the lights, and could not be induced to cross the illuminated
+bar thrown athwart the yard from the open door. The official impatience
+of the delay was expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but
+throughout the interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face,
+sat motionless in his saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt
+presentment of indifference, while, perched behind him, Meddy was
+continually busy in readjusting her skirts or shawl or a small bundle
+that presumably contained her rustic finery, but which, to a close
+approach, would have disclosed the sulphurous odor of gunpowder. When
+the cluster of horsemen was fairly on the march, however, she sat quite
+still, and more than once Seymour noted that, with her face close to
+the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering in his ear. What was their
+garnet he marvelled, having once projected the idea that this late comer
+was, himself, the "wolf's head" whom they were to chase down for a rich
+reward, incongruously hunting amidst his own hue and cry. Or, Seymour
+again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of a scheme from his
+own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed,
+after all, scant communication between the two, and this was even less
+when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds
+falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with
+an incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the
+sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they
+went at first, but presently they were following through bosky recesses
+a deer-path, winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning
+foliage let in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles
+stood in sheeny silver illumination. The drops of moisture glittered
+jewel-wise on the dark boughs of fir and pine, and one could even
+discriminate the red glow of sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory,
+so well were the chromatic harmonies asserted in this refined and
+refulgent glamour.
+
+"Barton Smith!" called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party.
+There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold.
+His conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his
+suspicion?
+
+"Smith! _Smith_" cried the irascible officer. "Hey, there! Is the man
+deaf!"
+
+"Not deef, edzac'ly," Meddlesome's voice sounded reproachfully; "jes a
+leetle hard o' hear in'." She had administered a warning nudge.
+
+"Hey? What ye want?" said the "Wolf's Head," suddenly checking his
+horse.
+
+"Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?" demanded the
+officer, sternly.
+
+"Just acrost the gorge," the guide answered easily.
+
+"I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned
+from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in."
+
+"That tree? It's away back yander," observed one of the posse, reluctant
+and disaffected.
+
+"Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now," said the
+guide.
+
+"Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told," said the sheriff,
+discontentedly; "but this is a long ja'nt. Ride up! Ride up!"
+
+Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were
+blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths
+were diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,--such
+tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path
+threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above
+which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints,
+was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a
+mere gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas
+across the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods
+filled with moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which
+differentiates its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour
+'of cultivated Scenes--something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a
+meaning addressed to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or
+words express.
+
+With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the
+saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were
+gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It
+was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by
+slight standards.
+
+"Have we got to cross this?" asked the officer, still in the saddle and
+gazing downward.
+
+"Ef ye foller me," said the guide, indifferently.
+
+But he was ahead of his orders. He visibly braced his nerves for the
+effort, and holding his rifle as a balancing-pole, he sped along the
+light span with a tread as deft as a fox or a wolf. In a moment he had
+gained the farther side.
+
+They scarcely knew how it happened. So unexpected was the event that,
+though it occurred before their eyes, they did not seem to see it. They
+remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one
+single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the
+log, heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went
+crashing down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell,
+sufficing to wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth
+and rock from the verge of the precipice.
+
+The horses sprang back snorting and frightened; the officer's, being a
+fine animal in prime condition, tried to bolt. Before he had him well
+in hand again, the man on the opposite brink had vanished. The sheriff's
+suspicions were barely astir when a hallooing voice in the rear made
+itself heard, and a horseman, breathless with haste, his steed flecked
+with foam, rode up, indignant, flushed, and eager.
+
+"Whyn't ye wait for me, Sher'ff? Ye air all on the wrong track," he
+cried. "Boyston McGurny be hid in the skellington's tree. I glimpsed him
+thar myself, an' gin information."
+
+The sheriff gazed down with averse and suspicious eyes. "What's all
+this!" he said sternly. "Give an account of yourself."
+
+"Me!" exclaimed the man in amazement. "Why, I'm Barton Smith, yer guide,
+that's who. An' I'm good for five hundred dollars' reward."
+
+But the sheriff called off the pursuit for the time, as he had no means
+of replacing the bridge or of crossing the chasm.
+
+Meddlesome's share in the escape was not detected, and for a while she
+had no incentive to the foolhardiness of boasting. But her prudence
+diminished when the reward for the apprehension of Boyston McGurny was
+suddenly withdrawn. The confession of one of the distillers, dying of
+tuberculosis contracted in prison, who had himself fired the fatal shot,
+had established the alibi that McGurny claimed, and served to relieve
+him of all suspicion.
+
+He eventually became a "herder" of cattle on the bald of the mountain
+and a farmer in a small way, and in these placid pursuits he found a
+contented existence. But, occasionally, a crony of his olden time would
+contrast the profits of this tame industry at a disadvantage with the
+quick and large returns of the "wild cat," when he would "confess and
+avoid."
+
+"That's true, that's all true; but a man can't holp it no ways in the
+world whenst he hev got a wife that is so out-an'-out meddlesome that
+she won't let him run ag'in' the law, nohow he kin fix it."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by 
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+   "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" >
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      Wolf's Head, by Charles Egbert Craddock
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+
+    body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify}
+    P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; }
+    H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; }
+    hr  { width: 50%; text-align: center;}
+    .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; }
+    blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;}
+    .mynote    {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;}
+    .toc       { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;}
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+    div.fig    { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; }
+    div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; }
+    .figleft   {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;}
+    .figright  {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;}
+    .pagenum   {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal;
+               margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%;
+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
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+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolf's Head
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23549]
+Last Updated: December 19, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF'S HEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      WOLF&rsquo;S HEAD
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of
+      dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling
+      torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their
+      savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,&mdash;the panther, the bear,
+      the catamount, the wolf,&mdash;and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive,
+      both fearsome and afraid, the man with a &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head,&rdquo; on which was set a
+      price, even as the State&rsquo;s bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had
+      pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement
+      on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being
+      summoned to serve on a sheriff&rsquo;s posse in the discharge of the grimmest of
+      duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has
+      survived, but the fact is obsolete,&rdquo; said Seymour, who was both a prig and
+      a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain of his
+      sylvan accomplishments. &ldquo;Our law places no man beyond the pale of its
+      protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy that
+      privilege&mdash;five hundred dollars?&rdquo; asked Bygrave, who was a newspaper
+      man and had a habit of easy satire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive.&rdquo; Purcell&rsquo;s
+      vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination of
+      chances and relative values. &ldquo;Therefore he is as definitely <i>caput
+      lupinum</i> as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for
+      cracking his &lsquo;wolf&rsquo;s head&rsquo; off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake
+      of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive
+      to live!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jes by his rifle, I reckon,&rdquo; replied the rural gossip whom intrusive
+      curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. &ldquo;Though sence that thar
+      big reward hev been n&rsquo;ised abroad, I&rsquo;d think he&rsquo;d be plumb afraid ter fire
+      a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect,
+      despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow,
+      thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into
+      a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head.
+      There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial
+      contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his
+      persistent, rasping chirp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what frets Meddy; she can&rsquo;t abide the idee of huntin&rsquo; a human with
+      sech special coursers ez money reward. She &lsquo;lows it mought tempt a&rsquo; evil
+      man or a&rsquo; ignorant one ter swear a miser&rsquo;ble wretch&rsquo;s life away. Let the
+      law strengthen its own hands&mdash;that&rsquo;s what Meddy say. Don&rsquo;t kindle the
+      sperit of Cain in every brother&rsquo;s breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical
+      whenst she fairly gits ter goin&rsquo;, though it&rsquo;s all on account of that thar
+      man what war growed up in a tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour&rsquo;s
+      mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural
+      perversion of the legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the
+      question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the
+      ground about it and idly listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day&mdash;&lsquo;t war &lsquo;bout two year&rsquo; ago&mdash;thar war a valley-man up
+      hyar a-huntin&rsquo; in the mountings with some other fellers, an&rsquo; toward sunset
+      he war a-waitin&rsquo; at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
+      hopin&rsquo; ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
+      luck war ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; him, fer he got nuthin&rsquo; but durned tired. So, ez he
+      waited, he grounded his rifle, an&rsquo; leaned himself ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; a great big tree
+      ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an&rsquo;,
+      folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked
+      into a skellington&rsquo;s eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington&rsquo;s grisly face
+      peerin&rsquo; at him through a crack in the bark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in
+      expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted
+      the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of
+      red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank,
+      with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side,
+      and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the massive, purple
+      mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave,
+      saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the
+      eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez skellingtons.
+      He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached
+      Colbury, an&rsquo; thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the
+      game. Skellingtons, he said, didn&rsquo;t grow on trees spontaneous, an&rsquo; he hed
+      an official interes&rsquo; in human relics out o&rsquo; place. So he kem,&mdash;the
+      tree is &lsquo;twixt hyar an&rsquo; my house thar on the rise,&mdash;an&rsquo;, folks! the
+      tale war plain. Some man chased off &lsquo;n the face of the yearth, hid out
+      from the law,&mdash;that&rsquo;s the way Meddy takes it,&mdash;he hed clomb the
+      tree, an&rsquo; it bein&rsquo; holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; course
+      he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It monght hev been deeper &lsquo;n
+      he calculated, or mo&rsquo; narrow, but he couldn&rsquo;t make the rise. He died still
+      strugglin&rsquo;, fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      rotted a deal sence then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was the man?&rdquo; asked Seymour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody knows,&mdash;nobody keers &lsquo;cept&rsquo; Meddy. She hev wep&rsquo; a bushel o&rsquo; 
+      tears about him. The cor&rsquo;ner &lsquo;lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
+      rifle he hed with him that it mus&rsquo; hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago.
+      Meddy she will git ter studyin&rsquo; on that of a winter night, an&rsquo; how the
+      woman that keered fer him mus&rsquo; hev watched an&rsquo; waited fer him, an&rsquo; &lsquo;lowed
+      he war deceitful an&rsquo; de-sertin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst
+      he war dyin&rsquo; so pitiful an&rsquo; helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy
+      will tune up agin, an&rsquo; mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn&rsquo;t even graced
+      with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic&rsquo;lar afflicted that
+      he hed ter die afoot.&rdquo; Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously
+      facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A horrible fate!&rdquo; exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edzac&rsquo;ly,&rdquo; the old mountaineer assented easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s her name&mdash;Meggy?&rdquo; asked the journalist, with a mechanical
+      aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw; Meddy&mdash;short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina
+      Haddox; but I reckon every livin&rsquo; soul hev forgot&rsquo; it but me. She is jes
+      Meddlesome by name, an&rsquo; meddlesome by natur&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant
+      mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the
+      sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That mus&rsquo; be Meddy now,&rdquo; he commented, &ldquo;with her salt-risin&rsquo; bread. She
+      lowed she war goin&rsquo; ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol&rsquo; her you-uns war
+      lackin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
+      store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower; the
+      young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was the
+      victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a load of
+      bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had returned
+      home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who had not
+      yet arrived. Purcell&rsquo;s boast that he could bake ash-cake proved a bluff,
+      and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds on the
+      coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant&rsquo;s favor as she appeared, and
+      were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
+      middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she
+      paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a
+      swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown
+      lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well
+      with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short waist,
+      close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the immemorial
+      fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since there was
+      prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of which the cut of her
+      garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her throat had in its folds
+      a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands, and her hair, meekly
+      parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown, and fell in heavy
+      undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but distinct tracery of
+      bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she might have seemed
+      eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with the peace of mind of
+      the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied expression of her eyes.
+      Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were full of care and
+      perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between her eye-brows was so
+      marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing. Troubled about many
+      things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not even delegate the opening
+      of a basket that her little brother had brought and placed beside the
+      camp-fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, Gran&rsquo;dad,&rdquo; she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly forward&mdash;&ldquo;<i>don&rsquo;t</i>
+      put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box &lsquo;pears ter be damp. Leave
+      the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It&rsquo;ll eat shorter then, bein&rsquo; 
+      fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer supper,&rdquo;&mdash;dropping on
+      one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the basket on her arm, some
+      thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,&mdash;&ldquo;I baked some dodgers, too&mdash;four,
+      six, eight, ten,&rdquo;&mdash;she was counting a dozen golden-brown cates of
+      delectable aspect&mdash;&ldquo;knowin&rsquo; they would hone fer cornmeal arter
+      huntin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; nuthin&rsquo; else nohow air fitten ter eat with feesh or aigs. Hev
+      you-uns got any aigs!&rdquo; She sprang up, and, standing on agile tiptoe,
+      peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly she recoiled with a
+      cry of horrified reproach. &ldquo;Thar &lsquo;s ants in yer short-sweetenin&rsquo;! How <i>could</i>
+      you-uns let sechez that happen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, surely not,&rdquo; exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact
+      could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome&rsquo;s unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic
+      concerns disclosed other shortcomings. &ldquo;Why n&rsquo;t ye keep the top on yer
+      coffee-can? Don&rsquo;t ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin&rsquo; open?&rdquo; She
+      repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: &ldquo;We-uns
+      ain&rsquo;t got no short-sweetenin&rsquo; at our house, but I&rsquo;ll send my leetle
+      brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin&rsquo; fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
+      Sol,&rdquo;&mdash;addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
+      ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
+      supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,&mdash;&ldquo;run
+      ter the house an&rsquo; fetch the sorghum-jug.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly
+      called out in a frenzy of warning: &ldquo;Go the other way, Sol&mdash;up through
+      the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
+      precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger. Being
+      unhurt, he was resentful&rsquo; &ldquo;They ain&rsquo;t none o&rsquo; <i>yer</i> feet, nohow,&rdquo; he
+      grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, Sol,&rdquo; said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and the
+      sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome&rsquo;s iron rule. &ldquo;Everything belongs
+      ter Meddlesome one way or another, &lsquo;ca&rsquo;se she jes makes it hern. So take
+      keer of <i>yer</i> feet for <i>her</i> sake.&rdquo; He turned toward her
+      jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. &ldquo;I jes
+      been tellin&rsquo; these hunter-men, Meddy, &lsquo;bout how ye sets yerself even ter
+      meddle with other folkses&rsquo; mourning&mdash;what they got through with a
+      hunderd year&rsquo; ago&mdash;tormentatin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout that thar man what war starved
+      in the tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation of
+      this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather that
+      she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would seem
+      that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots on
+      which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her action
+      in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more lives than
+      one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial subject, even
+      ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky. He
+      might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections, and
+      the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one suit of
+      clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now swayed in the
+      process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should his integrity
+      succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum might inundate
+      his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond the pale of polite
+      society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place for Sol till such
+      time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Sol!&rdquo; she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
+      between possibility and accomplished fact. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fetch the jug myself.
+      I&rsquo;ll take the short cut an&rsquo; head him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
+      tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
+      flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
+      reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
+      mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing it,
+      but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and after a
+      moment&rsquo;s hesitation, she was springing from one to another of the great,
+      half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent crystal-brown
+      water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More than once, to evade
+      the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the continuous roar, she
+      stood still in midstream and gazed upward or at the opposite bank. The
+      woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow and variant russet
+      and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was impenetrable. The
+      great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted sharply with the
+      white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and sycamore and poplar, and,
+      thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost illimitable avenues of
+      sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of willows on the opposite bank,
+      at the waters-edge, a spring, a circular, rock-bound reservoir; in the
+      marshy margin she could see the imprints of the cleft hoofs of deer, and
+      thence ran the indefinite trail known as a deer-path. The dense covert
+      along the steep slope was a famous &ldquo;deer-stand,&rdquo; and there many a fine
+      buck had been killed. All at once she was reminded of the storied tree
+      hard by, the tragedy of which she had often bewept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing of
+      so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of a
+      last-year&rsquo;s storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre of
+      the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures that
+      the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these&mdash;she thought
+      herself in a dream&mdash;a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as
+      suddenly vanished!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat She
+      wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
+      rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a muscular
+      instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
+      self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze at
+      the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
+      discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
+      mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief so
+      great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less poignant
+      than the original shock when she realized that this face was not the
+      grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence heretofore, but was
+      clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive. Once more, as she
+      gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure, and in that instant a
+      glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand appeared,&mdash;beckoning
+      her to approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
+      this was the fugitive, the &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head,&rdquo; and should she turn to flee, he
+      could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would fancy
+      her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward. Perhaps
+      feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to find an
+      employ in the management of others influenced her decision; though
+      trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and made her
+      way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was she who
+      spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her arm that
+      all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had induced his
+      disclosure of his identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s empty,&rdquo; she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch, and
+      asked wonderingly, &ldquo;Is game skeerce?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. &ldquo;Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,&rdquo; he
+      replied with a bitter laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the riddle,
+      but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. &ldquo;Ye hev tuk a
+      powerful pore place ter hide,&rdquo; she admonished him. &ldquo;This tree is a plumb
+      cur&rsquo;osity. Gran&rsquo;dad Kettison war tellin&rsquo; some camp-hunters &lsquo;bout&rsquo;n it jes
+      this evenin&rsquo;. Like ez not they&rsquo;ll kem ter view it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
+      a-smoulder. &ldquo;Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!&rdquo; he moaned wretchedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. &ldquo;Ye oughter hev remembered
+      the Lawd &lsquo;fore ye done it,&rdquo; she said, with a repellent impulse; then she
+      would have given much to recall the reproach. The man was desperate; his
+      safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure it, and anger would
+      limber the trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
+      bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. &ldquo;Done
+      what?&rdquo; he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not reply,
+      he spoke for her. &ldquo;The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn&rsquo;t even thar. I
+      knowed nuthin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my hope, I
+      warn&rsquo;t even thar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood astounded. &ldquo;Then why n&rsquo;t ye leave it ter men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t <i>prove</i> it ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; the murderers&rsquo; oaths. I had been consarned
+      in the moonshinin&rsquo; that ended in murder, but <i>I</i> hed not been nigh
+      the still fer a month,&mdash;I war out a-huntin&rsquo;&mdash;when the revenuers
+      made the raid. There war a scrimmage &lsquo;twixt the raiders an&rsquo; the
+      distillers, an&rsquo; an outsider that hed nuthin&rsquo; ter do with the Federal law&mdash;he
+      war the constable o&rsquo; the deestrick, an&rsquo; jes rid with the gang ter see the
+      fun or ter show them the way&mdash;he war killed. An&rsquo; account o&rsquo; <i>him</i>,
+      the State law kem into the game. Them other moonshiners war captured, an&rsquo; 
+      they swore ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; me &lsquo;bout the shootin&rsquo; ter save tharselves, but I hearn
+      thar false oaths hev done them no good, they being held as accessory. An&rsquo; 
+      I be so ez I can&rsquo;t prove an alibi&mdash;I can&rsquo;t <i>prove</i> it, though
+      it&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s truth. But before high heaven&rdquo;&mdash;he lifted his gaunt right
+      hand&mdash;&ldquo;I am innercent, I am inner-cent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not have said why,&mdash;perhaps she realized afterward,&mdash;but
+      she believed him absolutely, implicitly. A fervor of sympathy for his
+      plight, of commiseration, surged up in her heart. &ldquo;I wisht it war so I
+      could gin ye some pervisions,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;though ye do &lsquo;pear toler&rsquo;ble
+      triflin&rsquo; ter lack game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the dread secret was told. &ldquo;Gal,&rdquo;&mdash;he used the word as a polite
+      form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated &ldquo;lady,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;ef
+      ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca&rsquo;tridge lef&rsquo;, not
+      a dust of powder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry of
+      dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall. My knife-blade is bruk,
+      but I reckon thar is enough lef&rsquo; ter split my jugular whenst the eend is
+      kem at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl suddenly caught her faculties together. &ldquo;What sorter fool talk is
+      that!&rdquo; she demanded sternly.&rsquo; &ldquo;Ye do my bid, ef ye knows what&rsquo;s good fer
+      ye. Git out&rsquo;n this trap of a tree an&rsquo; hide &lsquo;mongst the crevices of the
+      rocks till seben o &lsquo;clock ternight. Then kem up ter Gran&rsquo;dad Kettison&rsquo;s
+      whenst it is cleverly dark an&rsquo; tap on the glass winder&mdash;not on the
+      batten shutter. An&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll hev cartridges an&rsquo; powder an&rsquo; ball for ye&rsquo; an&rsquo; 
+      some victuals ready, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the fugitive, despite his straits, demurred. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want ter git old
+      man Kettison into trouble for lendin&rsquo; ter me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;T ain&rsquo;t his&rsquo;n. &lsquo;T is my dad&rsquo;s old buckshot ca&rsquo;tridges an&rsquo; powder an&rsquo; 
+      ball. They belong ter me. The other childern is my half-brothers, bein&rsquo; my
+      mother war married twice. Ye kin <i>steal</i> this gear from me, ef that
+      will make ye feel easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what will yer gran&rsquo;dad say ter me?&rdquo; &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t know who ye be; he will
+      jes &lsquo;low ye air one o&rsquo; the boys who air always foolin&rsquo; away thar time
+      visitin&rsquo; me an&rsquo; makin&rsquo; tallow-dips skeerce.&rdquo; The sudden gleam of mirth on
+      her face was like an illuminating burst of sunshine, and somehow it cast
+      an irradiation into the heart of the fugitive, for, after she was gone out
+      of sight, he pondered upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the early dusk fell from a lowering sky, and the night came on
+      beclouded and dark. Some turbulent spirit was loosed in the air, and the
+      wind was wild. Great, surging masses of purple vapor came in a mad rout
+      from the dank west and gathered above the massive and looming mountains.
+      The woods bent and tossed and clashed their boughs in the riot, of gusts,
+      the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began to fall.
+      The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the broad,
+      pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines, an
+      unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam
+      rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage,
+      tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed,
+      the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way along
+      the bridle-path that led to old Kettison&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rude comfort of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason of
+      the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening
+      fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a
+      source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in
+      admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem
+      unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory flames, red
+      and yellow, was streaming from the great chimney-place, and before the
+      broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their outstretched boots steaming
+      in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried herbs, gourds of
+      varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters. The old man&rsquo;s gay,
+      senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife, a type of comely rustic
+      age, who made much of the fact that, though housebound from &ldquo;rheumatics,&rdquo;
+       she had reared her dead daughter&rsquo;s &ldquo;two orphin famblies,&rdquo; the said
+      daughter having married twice, neither man &ldquo;bein&rsquo; of a lastin&rsquo; quality,&rdquo;
+       as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, &ldquo;the eldest fambly,&rdquo; had been guide,
+      philosopher, and friend to the swarm of youngsters, and even now, in the
+      interests of peace and space and hearing, was seeking to herd them into an
+      adjoining room, when a sudden stentorian hail from without rang through
+      the splashing of the rain from the eaves, the crash of thunder among the
+      &ldquo;balds&rdquo; of the mountains, with its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging
+      of the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Light a tallow-dip, Meddy,&rdquo; cried old Kettison, excitedly. &ldquo;An&rsquo; fetch the
+      candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech a
+      night &lsquo;fore we bid &lsquo;em ter light an&rsquo; hitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But these were travelers not to be gainsaid&mdash;the sheriff of the
+      county and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his
+      aid as a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises.
+      However, the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the
+      influence of a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, &ldquo;strong
+      enough to walk from here to Colbury,&rdquo; according to the sheriff&rsquo;s
+      appreciative phrase. He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant
+      of his burly head and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His
+      hair stood up in two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he
+      had large, round, grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To
+      Meddy, staring horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked
+      while he explained the object of his expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison. Here
+      is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a reward
+      for five hundred dollars out for his arrest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s Boy&rsquo;s fault, Sher&rsquo;ff, not our&rsquo;n,&rdquo; leered the glib old man. He,
+      too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. &ldquo;Boy&rsquo;s in no wise
+      sociable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s plumb flying in the face of the law,&rdquo; declared the officer. &ldquo;If I
+      had a guide, I&rsquo;d not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man whenst
+      I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,&mdash;what&rsquo;s
+      his name!&mdash;yes, Smith, Barton Smith,&mdash;who will guide us to where
+      he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive.&rdquo; he added with an
+      inflection of doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful sequelae.
+      Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note, silently
+      sulked under the officer&rsquo;s intimation that, being able-bodied men, he
+      would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of his
+      county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse to aid the
+      law. Bygrave, however, realized a &ldquo;story&rdquo; in the air, and Seymour was
+      interested in the impending developments; for being a close observer, he
+      had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some tumultuous though
+      covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in her cheeks; her eyes
+      were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain whirled. To her the
+      crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her unwarranted
+      interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek to command the
+      march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish maneuvering had lured
+      this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish, and death. No warning could
+      he have; the window was opaque with the corrugations of the rainfall on
+      the streaming panes, and set too high to afford him a glimpse from
+      without. And, oh, how he would despise the traitor that she must needs
+      seem to be! She had not a moment for reflection, for counsel, for action.
+      Already the signal,&mdash;he was prompt at the tryst,&mdash;the sharp,
+      crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes
+      characterizing portly men. &ldquo;There he is now!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
+      door. &ldquo;Barton Smith!&rdquo; she exclaimed, with shrill significance. &ldquo;Hyar is
+      yer guide, Sher&rsquo;ff, wet ez a drownded rat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
+      flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement. For
+      a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with his
+      suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
+      discriminate the powers of the dramatis personæ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my man, step lively,&rdquo; said the officer in his big, husky voice. &ldquo;Do
+      you know this Royston McGurny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and
+      the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as
+      to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch
+      at the door, mustering his courage, replied: &ldquo;Know Royston McGurny! None
+      better. Knowed him all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got pretty good horse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go show ye whar the saddle be,&rdquo; exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted
+      officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme.
+      Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without,
+      whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape
+      before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the
+      possibility. But, no,&mdash;and he doubted anew all his suspicions,&mdash;in
+      a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that
+      pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine
+      group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her gown,
+      showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red plaid shawl
+      adjusted over her head and shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran&rsquo;dad,&rdquo; she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her mouth
+      full of pins, &ldquo;Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt Drusina&rsquo;s
+      house. Ye know she be ailin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; sent for me this evenin&rsquo;; but I hed no
+      way ter go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
+      imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need of
+      hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy of the
+      storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little cavalcade got
+      to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun shadows and dim
+      yellow flare of light from open door and window. One of the mounts had
+      burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from the plow-gear in the
+      shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and plunged at the lights,
+      and could not be induced to cross the illuminated bar thrown athwart the
+      yard from the open door. The official impatience of the delay was
+      expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but throughout the
+      interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face, sat motionless in his
+      saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt presentment of indifference,
+      while, perched behind him, Meddy was continually busy in readjusting her
+      skirts or shawl or a small bundle that presumably contained her rustic
+      finery, but which, to a close approach, would have disclosed the
+      sulphurous odor of gunpowder. When the cluster of horsemen was fairly on
+      the march, however, she sat quite still, and more than once Seymour noted
+      that, with her face close to the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering
+      in his ear. What was their garnet he marvelled, having once projected the
+      idea that this late comer was, himself, the &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head&rdquo; whom they were
+      to chase down for a rich reward, incongruously hunting amidst his own hue
+      and cry. Or, Seymour again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of
+      a scheme from his own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For
+      there seemed, after all, scant communication between the two, and this was
+      even less when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds
+      falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with an
+      incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the
+      sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they
+      went at first, but presently they were following through bosky recesses a
+      deer-path, winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning
+      foliage let in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles stood
+      in sheeny silver illumination. The drops of moisture glittered jewel-wise
+      on the dark boughs of fir and pine, and one could even discriminate the
+      red glow of sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory, so well were the
+      chromatic harmonies asserted in this refined and refulgent glamour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barton Smith!&rdquo; called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party.
+      There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold. His
+      conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his suspicion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smith! <i>Smith</i>&rdquo; cried the irascible officer. &ldquo;Hey, there! Is the man
+      deaf!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not deef, edzac&rsquo;ly,&rdquo; Meddlesome&rsquo;s voice sounded reproachfully; &ldquo;jes a
+      leetle hard o&rsquo; hear in&rsquo;.&rdquo; She had administered a warning nudge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey? What ye want?&rdquo; said the &ldquo;Wolf&rsquo;s Head,&rdquo; suddenly checking his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?&rdquo; demanded the
+      officer, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just acrost the gorge,&rdquo; the guide answered easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned
+      from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That tree? It&rsquo;s away back yander,&rdquo; observed one of the posse, reluctant
+      and disaffected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now,&rdquo; said the
+      guide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told,&rdquo; said the sheriff,
+      discontentedly; &ldquo;but this is a long ja&rsquo;nt. Ride up! Ride up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were
+      blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths were
+      diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,&mdash;such
+      tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path
+      threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above
+      which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints,
+      was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a mere
+      gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas across
+      the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods filled with
+      moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which differentiates
+      its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour &lsquo;of cultivated
+      Scenes&mdash;something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a meaning addressed
+      to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or words express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the
+      saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were
+      gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It
+      was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by
+      slight standards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we got to cross this?&rdquo; asked the officer, still in the saddle and
+      gazing downward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef ye foller me,&rdquo; said the guide, indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was ahead of his orders. He visibly braced his nerves for the
+      effort, and holding his rifle as a balancing-pole, he sped along the light
+      span with a tread as deft as a fox or a wolf. In a moment he had gained
+      the farther side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They scarcely knew how it happened. So unexpected was the event that,
+      though it occurred before their eyes, they did not seem to see it. They
+      remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one
+      single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the log,
+      heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went crashing
+      down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell, sufficing to
+      wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth and rock from
+      the verge of the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses sprang back snorting and frightened; the officer&rsquo;s, being a
+      fine animal in prime condition, tried to bolt. Before he had him well in
+      hand again, the man on the opposite brink had vanished. The sheriff&rsquo;s
+      suspicions were barely astir when a hallooing voice in the rear made
+      itself heard, and a horseman, breathless with haste, his steed flecked
+      with foam, rode up, indignant, flushed, and eager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whyn&rsquo;t ye wait for me, Sher&rsquo;ff? Ye air all on the wrong track,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Boyston McGurny be hid in the skellington&rsquo;s tree. I glimpsed him thar
+      myself, an&rsquo; gin information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff gazed down with averse and suspicious eyes. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s all this!&rdquo;
+       he said sternly. &ldquo;Give an account of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo; exclaimed the man in amazement. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m Barton Smith, yer guide,
+      that&rsquo;s who. An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m good for five hundred dollars&rsquo; reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sheriff called off the pursuit for the time, as he had no means of
+      replacing the bridge or of crossing the chasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome&rsquo;s share in the escape was not detected, and for a while she had
+      no incentive to the foolhardiness of boasting. But her prudence diminished
+      when the reward for the apprehension of Boyston McGurny was suddenly
+      withdrawn. The confession of one of the distillers, dying of tuberculosis
+      contracted in prison, who had himself fired the fatal shot, had
+      established the alibi that McGurny claimed, and served to relieve him of
+      all suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He eventually became a &ldquo;herder&rdquo; of cattle on the bald of the mountain and
+      a farmer in a small way, and in these placid pursuits he found a contented
+      existence. But, occasionally, a crony of his olden time would contrast the
+      profits of this tame industry at a disadvantage with the quick and large
+      returns of the &ldquo;wild cat,&rdquo; when he would &ldquo;confess and avoid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true, that&rsquo;s all true; but a man can&rsquo;t holp it no ways in the
+      world whenst he hev got a wife that is so out-an&rsquo;-out meddlesome that she
+      won&rsquo;t let him run ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; the law, nohow he kin fix it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf&rsquo;s Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
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+</pre>
+  </body>
+</html>
diff --git a/23549.txt b/23549.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1d40cf9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/23549.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1073 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolf's Head
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23549]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF'S HEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOLF'S HEAD
+
+By Charles Egbert Craddock
+
+1911
+
+
+It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of
+dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling
+torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their
+savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,--the panther, the bear, the
+catamount, the wolf,--and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both
+fearsome and afraid, the man with a "wolf's head," on which was set a
+price, even as the State's bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
+
+One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had
+pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement
+on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of
+being summoned to serve on a sheriff's posse in the discharge of the
+grimmest of duties.
+
+"But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has
+survived, but the fact is obsolete," said Seymour, who was both a prig
+and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain
+of his sylvan accomplishments. "Our law places no man beyond the pale
+of its protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in
+court."
+
+"What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy
+that privilege--five hundred dollars?" asked Bygrave, who was a
+newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.
+
+"Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive." Purcell's
+vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination
+of chances and relative values. "Therefore he is as definitely _caput
+lupinum_ as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for
+cracking his 'wolf's head' off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake
+of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive
+to live!"
+
+"Jes by his rifle, I reckon," replied the rural gossip whom intrusive
+curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. "Though sence that thar
+big reward hev been n'ised abroad, I'd think he'd be plumb afraid ter
+fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days."
+
+The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect,
+despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved,
+narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high
+forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back
+of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to
+the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened
+by his persistent, rasping chirp.
+
+"That's what frets Meddy; she can't abide the idee of huntin' a human
+with sech special coursers ez money reward. She 'lows it mought tempt
+a' evil man or a' ignorant one ter swear a miser'ble wretch's life
+away. Let the law strengthen its own hands--that's what Meddy say. Don't
+kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother's breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb
+comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin', though it's all on account of
+that thar man what war growed up in a tree."
+
+The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour's
+mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint
+rural perversion of the legend.
+
+But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the
+question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the
+ground about it and idly listened.
+
+"One day--'t war 'bout two year' ago--thar war a valley-man up hyar
+a-huntin' in the mountings with some other fellers, an' toward sunset
+he war a-waitin' at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
+hopin' ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
+luck war ag'in' him, fer he got nuthin' but durned tired. So, ez he
+waited, he grounded his rifle, an' leaned himself ag'in' a great big
+tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his
+head, an', folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek,
+he looked into a skellington's eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington's
+grisly face peerin' at him through a crack in the bark."
+
+The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent
+in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had
+bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous
+strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal
+air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on
+the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above
+the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity
+of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid
+vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively
+at it as he resumed:
+
+"Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez
+skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till
+he reached Colbury, an' thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk
+a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn't grow on trees
+spontaneous, an' he hed an official interes' in human relics out o'
+place. So he kem,--the tree is 'twixt hyar an' my house thar on the
+rise,--an', folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off 'n the face
+of the yearth, hid out from the law,--that's the way Meddy takes it,--he
+hed clomb the tree, an' it bein' holler, he drapped down inside it,
+thinkin' o' course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It
+monght hev been deeper 'n he calculated, or mo' narrow, but he couldn't
+make the rise. He died still strugglin', fer his long, bony fingers war
+gripped in the wood--it's rotted a deal sence then."
+
+"Who was the man?" asked Seymour.
+
+"Nobody knows,--nobody keers 'cept' Meddy. She hev wep' a bushel o'
+tears about him. The cor'ner 'lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
+rifle he hed with him that it mus' hev happened nigh a hunderd years
+ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin' on that of a winter night, an' how
+the woman that keered fer him mus' hev watched an' waited fer him, an'
+'lowed he war deceitful an' de-sertin', an' mebbe held a gredge agin
+him, whilst he war dyin' so pitiful an' helpless, walled up in that
+tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an' mighty nigh cry her eyes out.
+He warn't even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air
+partic'lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot." Old Kettison glanced
+about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face
+distended in a mocking grin.
+
+"A horrible fate!" exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
+
+"Edzac'ly," the old mountaineer assented easily.
+
+"What's her name--Meggy?" asked the journalist, with a mechanical
+aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
+
+"Naw; Meddy--short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox;
+but I reckon every livin' soul hev forgot' it but me. She is jes
+Meddlesome by name, an' meddlesome by natur'."
+
+He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant
+mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the
+sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
+
+"That mus' be Meddy now," he commented, "with her salt-risin' bread. She
+lowed she war goin' ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol' her you-uns war
+lackin'."
+
+For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
+store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower;
+the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was
+the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a
+load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had
+returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who
+had not yet arrived. Purcell's boast that he could bake ash-cake proved
+a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds
+on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff
+of life.
+
+Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant's favor as she appeared,
+and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
+middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as
+she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to
+a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown
+lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well
+with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short
+waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the
+immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity
+since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of
+which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her
+throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands,
+and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown,
+and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but
+distinct tracery of bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she
+might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with
+the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied
+expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were
+full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between
+her eye-brows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing.
+Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not
+even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had
+brought and placed beside the camp-fire.
+
+"Don't, Gran'dad," she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly
+forward--"_don't_ put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box 'pears
+ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It'll
+eat shorter then, bein' fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer
+supper,"--dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the
+basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,--"I baked
+some dodgers, too--four, six, eight, ten,"--she was counting a dozen
+golden-brown cates of delectable aspect--"knowin' they would hone fer
+cornmeal arter huntin', an' nuthin' else nohow air fitten ter eat with
+feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs!" She sprang up, and, standing
+on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly
+she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. "Thar 's ants in yer
+short-sweetenin'! How _could_ you-uns let sechez that happen!"
+
+"Oh, surely not," exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact
+could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
+
+Meddlesome's unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic
+concerns disclosed other shortcomings. "Why n't ye keep the top on yer
+coffee-can? Don't ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin' open?" She
+repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: "We-uns
+ain't got no short-sweetenin' at our house, but I'll send my leetle
+brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin' fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
+Sol,"--addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
+ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
+supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,--"run
+ter the house an' fetch the sorghum-jug."
+
+As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly
+called out in a frenzy of warning: "Go the other way, Sol--up through
+the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife."
+
+Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
+precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger.
+Being unhurt, he was resentful' "They ain't none o' _yer_ feet, nohow,"
+he grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
+
+"Oh, yes, Sol," said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and
+the sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome's iron rule. "Everything
+belongs ter Meddlesome one way or another, 'ca'se she jes makes it
+hern. So take keer of _yer_ feet for _her_ sake." He turned toward her
+jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. "I jes
+been tellin' these hunter-men, Meddy, 'bout how ye sets yerself even
+ter meddle with other folkses' mourning--what they got through with a
+hunderd year' ago--tormentatin' 'bout that thar man what war starved in
+the tree."
+
+She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation
+of this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather
+that she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would
+seem that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots
+on which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her
+action in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more
+lives than one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial
+subject, even ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
+
+Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky.
+He might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections,
+and the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one
+suit of clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now
+swayed in the process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should
+his integrity succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum
+might inundate his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond
+the pale of polite society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place
+for Sol till such time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry
+clothes.
+
+"Poor Sol!" she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
+between possibility and accomplished fact. "I'll fetch the jug myself.
+I'll take the short cut an' head him."
+
+Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
+tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
+flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
+reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
+mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing
+it, but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and
+after a moment's hesitation, she was springing from one to another of
+the great, half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent
+crystal-brown water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More
+than once, to evade the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the
+continuous roar, she stood still in midstream and gazed upward or at the
+opposite bank. The woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow
+and variant russet and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was
+impenetrable. The great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted
+sharply with the white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and
+sycamore and poplar, and, thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost
+illimitable avenues of sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of
+willows on the opposite bank, at the waters-edge, a spring, a circular,
+rock-bound reservoir; in the marshy margin she could see the imprints of
+the cleft hoofs of deer, and thence ran the indefinite trail known as
+a deer-path. The dense covert along the steep slope was a famous
+"deer-stand," and there many a fine buck had been killed. All at once
+she was reminded of the storied tree hard by, the tragedy of which she
+had often bewept.
+
+There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing
+of so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of
+a last-year's storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre
+of the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures
+that the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these--she thought
+herself in a dream--a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as
+suddenly vanished!
+
+Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat She
+wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
+rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a
+muscular instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
+self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze
+at the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
+discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
+mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief
+so great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less
+poignant than the original shock when she realized that this face
+was not the grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence
+heretofore, but was clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive.
+Once more, as she gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure,
+and in that instant a glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand
+appeared,--beckoning her to approach.
+
+It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
+this was the fugitive, the "wolf's head," and should she turn to flee,
+he could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would
+fancy her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward.
+Perhaps feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to
+find an employ in the management of others influenced her decision;
+though trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and
+made her way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was
+she who spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her
+arm that all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had
+induced his disclosure of his identity.
+
+"It's empty," she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch,
+and asked wonderingly, "Is game skeerce?"
+
+His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. "Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,"
+he replied with a bitter laugh.
+
+There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the
+riddle, but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. "Ye
+hev tuk a powerful pore place ter hide," she admonished him. "This tree
+is a plumb cur'osity. Gran'dad Kettison war tellin' some camp-hunters
+'bout'n it jes this evenin'. Like ez not they'll kem ter view it."
+
+His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
+a-smoulder. "Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!" he moaned wretchedly.
+
+Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. "Ye oughter hev
+remembered the Lawd 'fore ye done it," she said, with a repellent
+impulse; then she would have given much to recall the reproach. The man
+was desperate; his safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure
+it, and anger would limber the trigger.
+
+But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
+bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. "Done
+what?" he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not
+reply, he spoke for her. "The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn't even
+thar. I knowed nuthin' 'bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my
+hope, I warn't even thar."
+
+She stood astounded. "Then why n't ye leave it ter men?"
+
+"I can't _prove_ it ag'in' the murderers' oaths. I had been consarned
+in the moonshinin' that ended in murder, but _I_ hed not been nigh the
+still fer a month,--I war out a-huntin'--when the revenuers made the
+raid. There war a scrimmage 'twixt the raiders an' the distillers, an'
+an outsider that hed nuthin' ter do with the Federal law--he war the
+constable o' the deestrick, an' jes rid with the gang ter see the fun
+or ter show them the way--he war killed. An' account o' _him_, the State
+law kem into the game. Them other moonshiners war captured, an' they
+swore ag'in' me 'bout the shootin' ter save tharselves, but I hearn thar
+false oaths hev done them no good, they being held as accessory. An' I
+be so ez I can't prove an alibi--I can't _prove_ it, though it's God's
+truth. But before high heaven"--he lifted his gaunt right hand--"I am
+innercent, I am inner-cent."
+
+She could not have said why,--perhaps she realized afterward,--but
+she believed him absolutely, implicitly. A fervor of sympathy for his
+plight, of commiseration, surged up in her heart. "I wisht it war so I
+could gin ye some pervisions," she sighed, "though ye do 'pear toler'ble
+triflin' ter lack game."
+
+Then the dread secret was told. "Gal,"--he used the word as a polite
+form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated "lady,"--"ef
+ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca'tridge lef',
+not a dust of powder."
+
+Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry
+of dismay.
+
+"I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall. My knife-blade is bruk,
+but I reckon thar is enough lef' ter split my jugular whenst the eend is
+kem at last."
+
+The girl suddenly caught her faculties together. "What sorter fool talk
+is that!" she demanded sternly.' "Ye do my bid, ef ye knows what's good
+fer ye. Git out'n this trap of a tree an' hide 'mongst the crevices
+of the rocks till seben o 'clock ternight. Then kem up ter Gran'dad
+Kettison's whenst it is cleverly dark an' tap on the glass winder--not
+on the batten shutter. An' I'll hev cartridges an' powder an' ball for
+ye' an' some victuals ready, too."
+
+But the fugitive, despite his straits, demurred. "I don't want ter git
+old man Kettison into trouble for lendin' ter me."
+
+"'T ain't his'n. 'T is my dad's old buckshot ca'tridges an' powder an'
+ball. They belong ter me. The other childern is my half-brothers, bein'
+my mother war married twice. Ye kin _steal_ this gear from me, ef that
+will make ye feel easier."
+
+"But what will yer gran'dad say ter me?" "He won't know who ye be; he
+will jes 'low ye air one o' the boys who air always foolin' away thar
+time visitin' me an' makin' tallow-dips skeerce." The sudden gleam
+of mirth on her face was like an illuminating burst of sunshine, and
+somehow it cast an irradiation into the heart of the fugitive, for,
+after she was gone out of sight, he pondered upon it.
+
+But the early dusk fell from a lowering sky, and the night came on
+beclouded and dark. Some turbulent spirit was loosed in the air, and the
+wind was wild. Great, surging masses of purple vapor came in a mad rout
+from the dank west and gathered above the massive and looming mountains.
+The woods bent and tossed and clashed their boughs in the riot, of
+gusts, the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began
+to fall. The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the
+broad, pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines,
+an unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam
+rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage,
+tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed,
+the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way
+along the bridle-path that led to old Kettison's house.
+
+The rude comfort of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason
+of the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening
+fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a
+source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in
+admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem
+unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory flames, red
+and yellow, was streaming from the great chimney-place, and before
+the broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their outstretched boots
+steaming in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried
+herbs, gourds of varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters.
+The old man's gay, senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife,
+a type of comely rustic age, who made much of the fact that, though
+housebound from "rheumatics," she had reared her dead daughter's "two
+orphin famblies," the said daughter having married twice, neither man
+"bein' of a lastin' quality," as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, "the
+eldest fambly," had been guide, philosopher, and friend to the swarm
+of youngsters, and even now, in the interests of peace and space and
+hearing, was seeking to herd them into an adjoining room, when a sudden
+stentorian hail from without rang through the splashing of the rain from
+the eaves, the crash of thunder among the "balds" of the mountains, with
+its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging of the wind.
+
+"Light a tallow-dip, Meddy," cried old Kettison, excitedly. "An' fetch
+the candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech
+a night 'fore we bid 'em ter light an' hitch."
+
+But these were travelers not to be gainsaid--the sheriff of the county
+and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his aid as
+a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises. However,
+the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the influence of
+a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, "strong enough to walk
+from here to Colbury," according to the sheriff's appreciative phrase.
+He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant of his burly head
+and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His hair stood up in
+two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he had large, round,
+grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To Meddy, staring
+horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked while he
+explained the object of his expedition.
+
+"This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison.
+Here is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a
+reward for five hundred dollars out for his arrest."
+
+"That's Boy's fault, Sher'ff, not our'n," leered the glib old man. He,
+too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. "Boy's in no wise
+sociable."
+
+"It's plumb flying in the face of the law," declared the officer. "If
+I had a guide, I'd not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man
+whenst I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me
+here,--what's his name!--yes, Smith, Barton Smith,--who will guide us to
+where he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive." he added with an
+inflection of doubt.
+
+Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful
+sequelae. Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note,
+silently sulked under the officer's intimation that, being able-bodied
+men, he would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of
+his county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse
+to aid the law. Bygrave, however, realized a "story" in the air, and
+Seymour was interested in the impending developments; for being a close
+observer, he had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some
+tumultuous though covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in
+her cheeks; her eyes were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain
+whirled. To her the crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her
+unwarranted interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek
+to command the march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish
+maneuvering had lured this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish,
+and death. No warning could he have; the window was opaque with the
+corrugations of the rainfall on the streaming panes, and set too high
+to afford him a glimpse from without. And, oh, how he would despise
+the traitor that she must needs seem to be! She had not a moment for
+reflection, for counsel, for action. Already the signal,--he was prompt
+at the tryst,--the sharp, crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!
+
+The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes
+characterizing portly men. "There he is now!" he exclaimed.
+
+But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
+door. "Barton Smith!" she exclaimed, with shrill significance. "Hyar is
+yer guide, Sher'ff, wet ez a drownded rat."
+
+The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
+flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement.
+For a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with
+his suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
+discriminate the powers of the dramatis personae.
+
+"Now, my man, step lively," said the officer in his big, husky voice.
+"Do you know this Royston McGurny?"
+
+To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and
+the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as
+to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch
+at the door, mustering his courage, replied: "Know Royston McGurny! None
+better. Knowed him all my life."
+
+"Got pretty good horse?"
+
+"Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison's."
+
+"I'll go show ye whar the saddle be," exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted
+officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme.
+Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without,
+whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape
+before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the
+possibility. But, no,--and he doubted anew all his suspicions,--in
+a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that
+pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine
+group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her
+gown, showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red
+plaid shawl adjusted over her head and shoulders.
+
+"Gran'dad," she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her mouth
+full of pins, "Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt Drusina's
+house. Ye know she be ailin', an' sent for me this evenin'; but I hed no
+way ter go."
+
+The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
+imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need
+of hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
+
+There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy
+of the storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little
+cavalcade got to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun
+shadows and dim yellow flare of light from open door and window. One
+of the mounts had burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from
+the plow-gear in the shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and
+plunged at the lights, and could not be induced to cross the illuminated
+bar thrown athwart the yard from the open door. The official impatience
+of the delay was expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but
+throughout the interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face,
+sat motionless in his saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt
+presentment of indifference, while, perched behind him, Meddy was
+continually busy in readjusting her skirts or shawl or a small bundle
+that presumably contained her rustic finery, but which, to a close
+approach, would have disclosed the sulphurous odor of gunpowder. When
+the cluster of horsemen was fairly on the march, however, she sat quite
+still, and more than once Seymour noted that, with her face close to
+the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering in his ear. What was their
+garnet he marvelled, having once projected the idea that this late comer
+was, himself, the "wolf's head" whom they were to chase down for a rich
+reward, incongruously hunting amidst his own hue and cry. Or, Seymour
+again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of a scheme from his
+own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For there seemed,
+after all, scant communication between the two, and this was even less
+when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds
+falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with
+an incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the
+sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they
+went at first, but presently they were following through bosky recesses
+a deer-path, winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning
+foliage let in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles
+stood in sheeny silver illumination. The drops of moisture glittered
+jewel-wise on the dark boughs of fir and pine, and one could even
+discriminate the red glow of sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory,
+so well were the chromatic harmonies asserted in this refined and
+refulgent glamour.
+
+"Barton Smith!" called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party.
+There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold.
+His conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his
+suspicion?
+
+"Smith! _Smith_" cried the irascible officer. "Hey, there! Is the man
+deaf!"
+
+"Not deef, edzac'ly," Meddlesome's voice sounded reproachfully; "jes a
+leetle hard o' hear in'." She had administered a warning nudge.
+
+"Hey? What ye want?" said the "Wolf's Head," suddenly checking his
+horse.
+
+"Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?" demanded the
+officer, sternly.
+
+"Just acrost the gorge," the guide answered easily.
+
+"I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned
+from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in."
+
+"That tree? It's away back yander," observed one of the posse, reluctant
+and disaffected.
+
+"Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now," said the
+guide.
+
+"Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told," said the sheriff,
+discontentedly; "but this is a long ja'nt. Ride up! Ride up!"
+
+Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were
+blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths
+were diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,--such
+tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path
+threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above
+which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints,
+was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a
+mere gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas
+across the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods
+filled with moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which
+differentiates its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour
+'of cultivated Scenes--something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a
+meaning addressed to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or
+words express.
+
+With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the
+saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were
+gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It
+was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by
+slight standards.
+
+"Have we got to cross this?" asked the officer, still in the saddle and
+gazing downward.
+
+"Ef ye foller me," said the guide, indifferently.
+
+But he was ahead of his orders. He visibly braced his nerves for the
+effort, and holding his rifle as a balancing-pole, he sped along the
+light span with a tread as deft as a fox or a wolf. In a moment he had
+gained the farther side.
+
+They scarcely knew how it happened. So unexpected was the event that,
+though it occurred before their eyes, they did not seem to see it. They
+remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one
+single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the
+log, heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went
+crashing down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell,
+sufficing to wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth
+and rock from the verge of the precipice.
+
+The horses sprang back snorting and frightened; the officer's, being a
+fine animal in prime condition, tried to bolt. Before he had him well
+in hand again, the man on the opposite brink had vanished. The sheriff's
+suspicions were barely astir when a hallooing voice in the rear made
+itself heard, and a horseman, breathless with haste, his steed flecked
+with foam, rode up, indignant, flushed, and eager.
+
+"Whyn't ye wait for me, Sher'ff? Ye air all on the wrong track," he
+cried. "Boyston McGurny be hid in the skellington's tree. I glimpsed him
+thar myself, an' gin information."
+
+The sheriff gazed down with averse and suspicious eyes. "What's all
+this!" he said sternly. "Give an account of yourself."
+
+"Me!" exclaimed the man in amazement. "Why, I'm Barton Smith, yer guide,
+that's who. An' I'm good for five hundred dollars' reward."
+
+But the sheriff called off the pursuit for the time, as he had no means
+of replacing the bridge or of crossing the chasm.
+
+Meddlesome's share in the escape was not detected, and for a while she
+had no incentive to the foolhardiness of boasting. But her prudence
+diminished when the reward for the apprehension of Boyston McGurny was
+suddenly withdrawn. The confession of one of the distillers, dying of
+tuberculosis contracted in prison, who had himself fired the fatal shot,
+had established the alibi that McGurny claimed, and served to relieve
+him of all suspicion.
+
+He eventually became a "herder" of cattle on the bald of the mountain
+and a farmer in a small way, and in these placid pursuits he found a
+contented existence. But, occasionally, a crony of his olden time would
+contrast the profits of this tame industry at a disadvantage with the
+quick and large returns of the "wild cat," when he would "confess and
+avoid."
+
+"That's true, that's all true; but a man can't holp it no ways in the
+world whenst he hev got a wife that is so out-an'-out meddlesome that
+she won't let him run ag'in' the law, nohow he kin fix it."
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
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+      Wolf's Head, by Charles Egbert Craddock
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+               text-align: right;}
+    pre        { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;}
+
+</style>
+  </head>
+  <body>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf's Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Wolf's Head
+       1911
+
+Author: Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
+
+Release Date: November 19, 2007 [EBook #23549]
+Last Updated: December 19, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOLF'S HEAD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+    <div style="height: 8em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h1>
+      WOLF&rsquo;S HEAD
+    </h1>
+    <h2>
+      By Charles Egbert Craddock <br /> <br /> 1911
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /> <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of
+      dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling
+      torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their
+      savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,&mdash;the panther, the bear,
+      the catamount, the wolf,&mdash;and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive,
+      both fearsome and afraid, the man with a &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head,&rdquo; on which was set a
+      price, even as the State&rsquo;s bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had
+      pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement
+      on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being
+      summoned to serve on a sheriff&rsquo;s posse in the discharge of the grimmest of
+      duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has
+      survived, but the fact is obsolete,&rdquo; said Seymour, who was both a prig and
+      a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain of his
+      sylvan accomplishments. &ldquo;Our law places no man beyond the pale of its
+      protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in court.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy that
+      privilege&mdash;five hundred dollars?&rdquo; asked Bygrave, who was a newspaper
+      man and had a habit of easy satire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive.&rdquo; Purcell&rsquo;s
+      vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination of
+      chances and relative values. &ldquo;Therefore he is as definitely <i>caput
+      lupinum</i> as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for
+      cracking his &lsquo;wolf&rsquo;s head&rsquo; off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake
+      of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive
+      to live!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jes by his rifle, I reckon,&rdquo; replied the rural gossip whom intrusive
+      curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. &ldquo;Though sence that thar
+      big reward hev been n&rsquo;ised abroad, I&rsquo;d think he&rsquo;d be plumb afraid ter fire
+      a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect,
+      despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow,
+      thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into
+      a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head.
+      There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial
+      contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his
+      persistent, rasping chirp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what frets Meddy; she can&rsquo;t abide the idee of huntin&rsquo; a human with
+      sech special coursers ez money reward. She &lsquo;lows it mought tempt a&rsquo; evil
+      man or a&rsquo; ignorant one ter swear a miser&rsquo;ble wretch&rsquo;s life away. Let the
+      law strengthen its own hands&mdash;that&rsquo;s what Meddy say. Don&rsquo;t kindle the
+      sperit of Cain in every brother&rsquo;s breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical
+      whenst she fairly gits ter goin&rsquo;, though it&rsquo;s all on account of that thar
+      man what war growed up in a tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour&rsquo;s
+      mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural
+      perversion of the legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the
+      question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the
+      ground about it and idly listened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One day&mdash;&lsquo;t war &lsquo;bout two year&rsquo; ago&mdash;thar war a valley-man up
+      hyar a-huntin&rsquo; in the mountings with some other fellers, an&rsquo; toward sunset
+      he war a-waitin&rsquo; at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek,
+      hopin&rsquo; ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon
+      luck war ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; him, fer he got nuthin&rsquo; but durned tired. So, ez he
+      waited, he grounded his rifle, an&rsquo; leaned himself ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; a great big tree
+      ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an&rsquo;,
+      folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked
+      into a skellington&rsquo;s eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington&rsquo;s grisly face
+      peerin&rsquo; at him through a crack in the bark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in
+      expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted
+      the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of
+      red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank,
+      with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side,
+      and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the massive, purple
+      mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave,
+      saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the
+      eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he resumed:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez skellingtons.
+      He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached
+      Colbury, an&rsquo; thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the
+      game. Skellingtons, he said, didn&rsquo;t grow on trees spontaneous, an&rsquo; he hed
+      an official interes&rsquo; in human relics out o&rsquo; place. So he kem,&mdash;the
+      tree is &lsquo;twixt hyar an&rsquo; my house thar on the rise,&mdash;an&rsquo;, folks! the
+      tale war plain. Some man chased off &lsquo;n the face of the yearth, hid out
+      from the law,&mdash;that&rsquo;s the way Meddy takes it,&mdash;he hed clomb the
+      tree, an&rsquo; it bein&rsquo; holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin&rsquo; o&rsquo; course
+      he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It monght hev been deeper &lsquo;n
+      he calculated, or mo&rsquo; narrow, but he couldn&rsquo;t make the rise. He died still
+      strugglin&rsquo;, fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood&mdash;it&rsquo;s
+      rotted a deal sence then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who was the man?&rdquo; asked Seymour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nobody knows,&mdash;nobody keers &lsquo;cept&rsquo; Meddy. She hev wep&rsquo; a bushel o&rsquo; 
+      tears about him. The cor&rsquo;ner &lsquo;lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock
+      rifle he hed with him that it mus&rsquo; hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago.
+      Meddy she will git ter studyin&rsquo; on that of a winter night, an&rsquo; how the
+      woman that keered fer him mus&rsquo; hev watched an&rsquo; waited fer him, an&rsquo; &lsquo;lowed
+      he war deceitful an&rsquo; de-sertin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst
+      he war dyin&rsquo; so pitiful an&rsquo; helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy
+      will tune up agin, an&rsquo; mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn&rsquo;t even graced
+      with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic&rsquo;lar afflicted that
+      he hed ter die afoot.&rdquo; Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously
+      facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A horrible fate!&rdquo; exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edzac&rsquo;ly,&rdquo; the old mountaineer assented easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&rsquo;s her name&mdash;Meggy?&rdquo; asked the journalist, with a mechanical
+      aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw; Meddy&mdash;short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina
+      Haddox; but I reckon every livin&rsquo; soul hev forgot&rsquo; it but me. She is jes
+      Meddlesome by name, an&rsquo; meddlesome by natur&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant
+      mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the
+      sumac-bushes heralded an approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That mus&rsquo; be Meddy now,&rdquo; he commented, &ldquo;with her salt-risin&rsquo; bread. She
+      lowed she war goin&rsquo; ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol&rsquo; her you-uns war
+      lackin&rsquo;.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the
+      store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower; the
+      young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was the
+      victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a load of
+      bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had returned
+      home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who had not
+      yet arrived. Purcell&rsquo;s boast that he could bake ash-cake proved a bluff,
+      and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds on the
+      coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff of life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant&rsquo;s favor as she appeared, and
+      were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and
+      middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she
+      paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a
+      swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown
+      lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well
+      with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short waist,
+      close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the immemorial
+      fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since there was
+      prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of which the cut of her
+      garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her throat had in its folds
+      a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands, and her hair, meekly
+      parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown, and fell in heavy
+      undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but distinct tracery of
+      bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she might have seemed
+      eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with the peace of mind of
+      the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied expression of her eyes.
+      Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were full of care and
+      perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between her eye-brows was so
+      marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing. Troubled about many
+      things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not even delegate the opening
+      of a basket that her little brother had brought and placed beside the
+      camp-fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t, Gran&rsquo;dad,&rdquo; she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly forward&mdash;&ldquo;<i>don&rsquo;t</i>
+      put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box &lsquo;pears ter be damp. Leave
+      the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It&rsquo;ll eat shorter then, bein&rsquo; 
+      fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer supper,&rdquo;&mdash;dropping on
+      one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the basket on her arm, some
+      thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,&mdash;&ldquo;I baked some dodgers, too&mdash;four,
+      six, eight, ten,&rdquo;&mdash;she was counting a dozen golden-brown cates of
+      delectable aspect&mdash;&ldquo;knowin&rsquo; they would hone fer cornmeal arter
+      huntin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; nuthin&rsquo; else nohow air fitten ter eat with feesh or aigs. Hev
+      you-uns got any aigs!&rdquo; She sprang up, and, standing on agile tiptoe,
+      peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly she recoiled with a
+      cry of horrified reproach. &ldquo;Thar &lsquo;s ants in yer short-sweetenin&rsquo;! How <i>could</i>
+      you-uns let sechez that happen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, surely not,&rdquo; exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact
+      could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome&rsquo;s unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic
+      concerns disclosed other shortcomings. &ldquo;Why n&rsquo;t ye keep the top on yer
+      coffee-can? Don&rsquo;t ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin&rsquo; open?&rdquo; She
+      repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: &ldquo;We-uns
+      ain&rsquo;t got no short-sweetenin&rsquo; at our house, but I&rsquo;ll send my leetle
+      brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin&rsquo; fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar,
+      Sol,&rdquo;&mdash;addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a
+      ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers
+      supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,&mdash;&ldquo;run
+      ter the house an&rsquo; fetch the sorghum-jug.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Sol started off with the alertness of a scurrying rabbit, she shrilly
+      called out in a frenzy of warning: &ldquo;Go the other way, Sol&mdash;up through
+      the pawpaws! Them cherty rocks will cut yer feet like a knife.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sol had nerves of his own. Her sharp cry had caused him to spring
+      precipitately backward, frightened, but uncomprehending his danger. Being
+      unhurt, he was resentful&rsquo; &ldquo;They ain&rsquo;t none o&rsquo; <i>yer</i> feet, nohow,&rdquo; he
+      grumbled, making a fresh start at less speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, Sol,&rdquo; said the old grandfather, enjoying the contretemps and the
+      sentiment of revolt against Meddlesome&rsquo;s iron rule. &ldquo;Everything belongs
+      ter Meddlesome one way or another, &lsquo;ca&rsquo;se she jes makes it hern. So take
+      keer of <i>yer</i> feet for <i>her</i> sake.&rdquo; He turned toward her
+      jocosely as the small emissary disappeared among the undergrowth. &ldquo;I jes
+      been tellin&rsquo; these hunter-men, Meddy, &lsquo;bout how ye sets yerself even ter
+      meddle with other folkses&rsquo; mourning&mdash;what they got through with a
+      hunderd year&rsquo; ago&mdash;tormentatin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout that thar man what war starved
+      in the tree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She heard him, doubtless, for a rising flush betokened her deprecation of
+      this ridicule in the presence of these strangers. But it was rather that
+      she remembered his words afterward than heeded them now. It would seem
+      that certain incidents, insignificant in themselves, are the pivots on
+      which turns the scheme of fate. She could not imagine that upon her action
+      in the next few seconds depended grave potentialities in more lives than
+      one. On the contrary, her deliberations were of a trivial subject, even
+      ludicrous in any other estimation than her own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sol was small, she argued within herself, the jug was large and sticky. He
+      might be tempted to lighten it, for Sol had saccharine predilections, and
+      the helpless Jug was at his mercy. Sol had scant judgment and one suit of
+      clothes available; the other, sopping wet from the wash, now swayed in the
+      process of drying on an elder-bush in the dooryard. Should his integrity
+      succumb, and the jug tilt too far, the stream of sorghum might inundate
+      his raiment, and the catastrophe would place him beyond the pale of polite
+      society. The seclusion of bed would be the only place for Sol till such
+      time as the elder-bush should bear the fruit of dry clothes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor Sol!&rdquo; she exclaimed, her prophetic sympathy bridging the chasm
+      between possibility and accomplished fact. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll fetch the jug myself.
+      I&rsquo;ll take the short cut an&rsquo; head him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus she set her feet in the path of her future. It led her into dense,
+      tangled woods, clambering over outcropping ledges and boulders. By the
+      flare of the west she guided her progress straight to the east till she
+      reached the banks of Headlong Creek on its tumultuous course down the
+      mountainside. In her hasty enterprise she had not counted on crossing it,
+      but Meddlesome rarely turned back. She was strong and active, and after a
+      moment&rsquo;s hesitation, she was springing from one to another of the great,
+      half-submerged boulders amidst the whirl of the transparent crystal-brown
+      water, with its fleck and fringe of white foam. More than once, to evade
+      the dizzying effect of the sinuous motion and the continuous roar, she
+      stood still in midstream and gazed upward or at the opposite bank. The
+      woods were dense on the slope. All in red and yellow and variant russet
+      and brown tints, the canopy of the forest foliage was impenetrable. The
+      great, dark boles of oak and gum and spruce contrasted sharply with the
+      white and greenish-gray trunks of beeches and sycamore and poplar, and,
+      thus breaking the monotony, gave long, almost illimitable avenues of
+      sylvan vistas. She noted amidst a growth of willows on the opposite bank,
+      at the waters-edge, a spring, a circular, rock-bound reservoir; in the
+      marshy margin she could see the imprints of the cleft hoofs of deer, and
+      thence ran the indefinite trail known as a deer-path. The dense covert
+      along the steep slope was a famous &ldquo;deer-stand,&rdquo; and there many a fine
+      buck had been killed. All at once she was reminded of the storied tree
+      hard by, the tragedy of which she had often bewept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There it stood, dead itself, weird, phantasmal, as befitted the housing of
+      so drear a fate. Its branches now bore no leaves. The lightnings of a
+      last-year&rsquo;s storm had scorched out its vital force and riven the fibre of
+      the wood. Here and there, too, the tooth of decay had gnawed fissures that
+      the bark had not earlier known; and from one of these&mdash;she thought
+      herself in a dream&mdash;a ghastly, white face looked out suddenly, and as
+      suddenly vanished!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her heart gave one wild plunge, then it seemed to cease to beat She
+      wondered afterward that she did not collapse, and sink into the plunging
+      rapids to drown, beaten and bruised against the rocks. It was a muscular
+      instinct that sustained her rather than a conscious impulse of
+      self-preservation. Motionless, horrified, amazed, she could only gaze at
+      the empty fissure of the tree on the slope. She could not then
+      discriminate the wild, spectral imaginations that assailed her untutored
+      mind. She could not remember these fantasies later. It was a relief so
+      great that the anguish of the physical reaction was scarcely less poignant
+      than the original shock when she realized that this face was not the
+      grisly skeleton lineaments that had looked out thence heretofore, but was
+      clothed with flesh, though gaunt, pallid, furtive. Once more, as she
+      gazed, it appeared in a mere glimpse at the fissure, and in that instant a
+      glance was interchanged. The next moment a hand appeared,&mdash;beckoning
+      her to approach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a gruesome mandate. She had scant choice. She did not doubt that
+      this was the fugitive, the &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head,&rdquo; and should she turn to flee, he
+      could stop her progress with a pistol-ball, for doubtless he would fancy
+      her alert to disclose the discovery and share in the reward. Perhaps
+      feminine curiosity aided fear; perhaps only her proclivity to find an
+      employ in the management of others influenced her decision; though
+      trembling in every fibre, she crossed the interval of water, and made her
+      way up the slope. But when she reached the fateful tree it was she who
+      spoke first. He cast so ravenous a glance at the basket on her arm that
+      all his story of want and woe was revealed. Starvation had induced his
+      disclosure of his identity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s empty,&rdquo; she said, inverting the basket. She watched him flinch, and
+      asked wonderingly, &ldquo;Is game skeerce?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes were at once forlorn and fierce. &ldquo;Oh, yes, powerful skeerce,&rdquo; he
+      replied with a bitter laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was an enigma in the rejoinder; she did not stay to read the riddle,
+      but went on to possess the situation, according to her wont. &ldquo;Ye hev tuk a
+      powerful pore place ter hide,&rdquo; she admonished him. &ldquo;This tree is a plumb
+      cur&rsquo;osity. Gran&rsquo;dad Kettison war tellin&rsquo; some camp-hunters &lsquo;bout&rsquo;n it jes
+      this evenin&rsquo;. Like ez not they&rsquo;ll kem ter view it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His eyes dilated with a sudden accession of terror that seemed always
+      a-smoulder. &ldquo;Lawd, Lawd, Lawd!&rdquo; he moaned wretchedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome was true to her name and tradition. &ldquo;Ye oughter hev remembered
+      the Lawd &lsquo;fore ye done it,&rdquo; she said, with a repellent impulse; then she
+      would have given much to recall the reproach. The man was desperate; his
+      safety lay in her silence. A pistol-shot would secure it, and anger would
+      limber the trigger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he did not seem indignant. His eyes, intelligent and feverishly
+      bright, gazed down at her only in obvious dismay and surprise. &ldquo;Done
+      what?&rdquo; he asked, and as, prudence prevailing for once, she did not reply,
+      he spoke for her. &ldquo;The murder, ye mean? Why, gal, I warn&rsquo;t even thar. I
+      knowed nuthin&rsquo; &lsquo;bout it till later. Ez God is my helper and my hope, I
+      warn&rsquo;t even thar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She stood astounded. &ldquo;Then why n&rsquo;t ye leave it ter men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t <i>prove</i> it ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; the murderers&rsquo; oaths. I had been consarned
+      in the moonshinin&rsquo; that ended in murder, but <i>I</i> hed not been nigh
+      the still fer a month,&mdash;I war out a-huntin&rsquo;&mdash;when the revenuers
+      made the raid. There war a scrimmage &lsquo;twixt the raiders an&rsquo; the
+      distillers, an&rsquo; an outsider that hed nuthin&rsquo; ter do with the Federal law&mdash;he
+      war the constable o&rsquo; the deestrick, an&rsquo; jes rid with the gang ter see the
+      fun or ter show them the way&mdash;he war killed. An&rsquo; account o&rsquo; <i>him</i>,
+      the State law kem into the game. Them other moonshiners war captured, an&rsquo; 
+      they swore ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; me &lsquo;bout the shootin&rsquo; ter save tharselves, but I hearn
+      thar false oaths hev done them no good, they being held as accessory. An&rsquo; 
+      I be so ez I can&rsquo;t prove an alibi&mdash;I can&rsquo;t <i>prove</i> it, though
+      it&rsquo;s God&rsquo;s truth. But before high heaven&rdquo;&mdash;he lifted his gaunt right
+      hand&mdash;&ldquo;I am innercent, I am inner-cent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could not have said why,&mdash;perhaps she realized afterward,&mdash;but
+      she believed him absolutely, implicitly. A fervor of sympathy for his
+      plight, of commiseration, surged up in her heart. &ldquo;I wisht it war so I
+      could gin ye some pervisions,&rdquo; she sighed, &ldquo;though ye do &lsquo;pear toler&rsquo;ble
+      triflin&rsquo; ter lack game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the dread secret was told. &ldquo;Gal,&rdquo;&mdash;he used the word as a polite
+      form of address, the equivalent of the more sophisticated &ldquo;lady,&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;ef
+      ye will believe me, all my ammunition is spent. Not a ca&rsquo;tridge lef&rsquo;, not
+      a dust of powder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddy caught both her hands to her lips to intercept and smother a cry of
+      dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I snared a rabbit two days ago in a dead-fall. My knife-blade is bruk,
+      but I reckon thar is enough lef&rsquo; ter split my jugular whenst the eend is
+      kem at last.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The girl suddenly caught her faculties together. &ldquo;What sorter fool talk is
+      that!&rdquo; she demanded sternly.&rsquo; &ldquo;Ye do my bid, ef ye knows what&rsquo;s good fer
+      ye. Git out&rsquo;n this trap of a tree an&rsquo; hide &lsquo;mongst the crevices of the
+      rocks till seben o &lsquo;clock ternight. Then kem up ter Gran&rsquo;dad Kettison&rsquo;s
+      whenst it is cleverly dark an&rsquo; tap on the glass winder&mdash;not on the
+      batten shutter. An&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll hev cartridges an&rsquo; powder an&rsquo; ball for ye&rsquo; an&rsquo; 
+      some victuals ready, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the fugitive, despite his straits, demurred. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want ter git old
+      man Kettison into trouble for lendin&rsquo; ter me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&lsquo;T ain&rsquo;t his&rsquo;n. &lsquo;T is my dad&rsquo;s old buckshot ca&rsquo;tridges an&rsquo; powder an&rsquo; 
+      ball. They belong ter me. The other childern is my half-brothers, bein&rsquo; my
+      mother war married twice. Ye kin <i>steal</i> this gear from me, ef that
+      will make ye feel easier.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what will yer gran&rsquo;dad say ter me?&rdquo; &ldquo;He won&rsquo;t know who ye be; he will
+      jes &lsquo;low ye air one o&rsquo; the boys who air always foolin&rsquo; away thar time
+      visitin&rsquo; me an&rsquo; makin&rsquo; tallow-dips skeerce.&rdquo; The sudden gleam of mirth on
+      her face was like an illuminating burst of sunshine, and somehow it cast
+      an irradiation into the heart of the fugitive, for, after she was gone out
+      of sight, he pondered upon it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the early dusk fell from a lowering sky, and the night came on
+      beclouded and dark. Some turbulent spirit was loosed in the air, and the
+      wind was wild. Great, surging masses of purple vapor came in a mad rout
+      from the dank west and gathered above the massive and looming mountains.
+      The woods bent and tossed and clashed their boughs in the riot, of gusts,
+      the sere leaves were flying in clouds, and presently rain began to fall.
+      The steady downpour increased in volume to torrents; then the broad,
+      pervasive flashes of lightning showed, in lieu of myriad lines, an
+      unbroken veil of steely gray swinging from the zenith, the white foam
+      rebounding as the masses of water struck the earth. The camp equipage,
+      tents and wagons succumbed beneath the fury of the tempest, and, indeed,
+      the hunters had much ado to saddle their horses and grope their way along
+      the bridle-path that led to old Kettison&rsquo;s house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rude comfort of the interior had a heightened emphasis by reason of
+      the elemental turmoils without. True, the rain beat in a deafening
+      fusillade upon the roof, and the ostentation of the one glass window, a
+      source of special pride to its owner, was at a temporary disadvantage in
+      admitting the fierce and ghastly electric glare, so recurrent as to seem
+      unintermittent. But the more genial illumination of hickory flames, red
+      and yellow, was streaming from the great chimney-place, and before the
+      broad hearth the guests were ensconced, their outstretched boots steaming
+      in the heat. Strings of scarlet peppers, bunches of dried herbs, gourds of
+      varied quaint shapes, hung swaying from the rafters. The old man&rsquo;s gay,
+      senile chirp of welcome was echoed by his wife, a type of comely rustic
+      age, who made much of the fact that, though housebound from &ldquo;rheumatics,&rdquo;
+       she had reared her dead daughter&rsquo;s &ldquo;two orphin famblies,&rdquo; the said
+      daughter having married twice, neither man &ldquo;bein&rsquo; of a lastin&rsquo; quality,&rdquo;
+       as she seriously phrased it. Meddy, &ldquo;the eldest fambly,&rdquo; had been guide,
+      philosopher, and friend to the swarm of youngsters, and even now, in the
+      interests of peace and space and hearing, was seeking to herd them into an
+      adjoining room, when a sudden stentorian hail from without rang through
+      the splashing of the rain from the eaves, the crash of thunder among the
+      &ldquo;balds&rdquo; of the mountains, with its lofty echoes, and the sonorous surging
+      of the wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Light a tallow-dip, Meddy,&rdquo; cried old Kettison, excitedly. &ldquo;An&rsquo; fetch the
+      candle on the porch so ez we-uns kin view who rides so late in sech a
+      night &lsquo;fore we bid &lsquo;em ter light an&rsquo; hitch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But these were travelers not to be gainsaid&mdash;the sheriff of the
+      county and four stout fellows from the town of Colbury, summoned to his
+      aid as a posse, all trooping in as if they owned the little premises.
+      However, the officer permitted himself to unbend a trifle under the
+      influence of a hospitable tender of home-made cherry-bounce, &ldquo;strong
+      enough to walk from here to Colbury,&rdquo; according to the sheriff&rsquo;s
+      appreciative phrase. He was a portly man, with a rolling, explanatory cant
+      of his burly head and figure toward his interlocutor as he talked. His
+      hair stood up in two tufts above his forehead, one on each side, and he
+      had large, round, grayish eyes and a solemn, pondering expression. To
+      Meddy, staring horror-stricken, he seemed as owlishly wise as he looked
+      while he explained the object of his expedition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This district have got a poor reputation with the law, Mr. Kettison. Here
+      is this fellow, Boyston McGurny, been about here two years, and a reward
+      for five hundred dollars out for his arrest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s Boy&rsquo;s fault, Sher&rsquo;ff, not our&rsquo;n,&rdquo; leered the glib old man. He,
+      too, had had a sip of the stalwart cherry-bounce. &ldquo;Boy&rsquo;s in no wise
+      sociable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It&rsquo;s plumb flying in the face of the law,&rdquo; declared the officer. &ldquo;If I
+      had a guide, I&rsquo;d not wait a minute, or if I could recognize the man whenst
+      I viewed him. The constable promised to send a fellow to meet me here,&mdash;what&rsquo;s
+      his name!&mdash;yes, Smith, Barton Smith,&mdash;who will guide us to where
+      he was last glimpsed. I hope to take him alive.&rdquo; he added with an
+      inflection of doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly this was a dreary camp-hunt, with all its distasteful sequelae.
+      Purcell, who had no more imagination than a promissory note, silently
+      sulked under the officer&rsquo;s intimation that, being able-bodied men, he
+      would expect the hunters also to ride with him. They were not of his
+      county, and doubted their obligation, but they would not refuse to aid the
+      law. Bygrave, however, realized a &ldquo;story&rdquo; in the air, and Seymour was
+      interested in the impending developments; for being a close observer, he
+      had perceived that the girl was in the clutch of some tumultuous though
+      covert agitation. Her blood blazed at fever-heat in her cheeks; her eyes
+      were on fire; every muscle was tense; and her brain whirled. To her the
+      crisis was tremendous. This was the result of her unwarranted
+      interference. Who was she, indeed, that she should seek to command the
+      march of events and deploy sequences? Her foolish maneuvering had lured
+      this innocent man to ruin, capture, anguish, and death. No warning could
+      he have; the window was opaque with the corrugations of the rainfall on
+      the streaming panes, and set too high to afford him a glimpse from
+      without. And, oh, how he would despise the traitor that she must needs
+      seem to be! She had not a moment for reflection, for counsel, for action.
+      Already the signal,&mdash;he was prompt at the tryst,&mdash;the sharp,
+      crystalline vibration of the tap on the glass!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff rose instantly with that cumbrous agility sometimes
+      characterizing portly men. &ldquo;There he is now!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Meddy, with a little hysterical cry, had sprung first to the opening
+      door. &ldquo;Barton Smith!&rdquo; she exclaimed, with shrill significance. &ldquo;Hyar is
+      yer guide, Sher&rsquo;ff, wet ez a drownded rat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The pale face in the dark aperture of the doorway, as the fire-light
+      flashed on it, grew ghastly white with terror and lean with amazement. For
+      a moment the man seemed petrified. Seymour, vaguely fumbling with his
+      suspicions, began to disintegrate the plot of the play, and to
+      discriminate the powers of the dramatis personæ.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, my man, step lively,&rdquo; said the officer in his big, husky voice. &ldquo;Do
+      you know this Royston McGurny?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To be sure, Seymour had no cause for suspicion but his own intuition and
+      the intangible evidence of tone and look all as obvious to the others as
+      to him. But he was at once doubtful and relieved when the haggard wretch
+      at the door, mustering his courage, replied: &ldquo;Know Royston McGurny! None
+      better. Knowed him all my life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got pretty good horse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got none at all; expect ter borry Mr. Kettison&rsquo;s.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll go show ye whar the saddle be,&rdquo; exclaimed Meddy, with her wonted
+      officious-ness, and glibly picking up the bits of her shattered scheme.
+      Seymour fully expected they would not return from the gloom without,
+      whither they had disappeared, but embrace the immediate chance of escape
+      before the inopportune arrival of the real Barton Smith should balk the
+      possibility. But, no,&mdash;and he doubted anew all his suspicions,&mdash;in
+      a trice here they both were again, a new courage, a new hope in that
+      pallid, furtive face, and another horse stood saddled among the equine
+      group at the door. Meddlesome was pinning up the brown skirt of her gown,
+      showing a red petticoat that had harmonies with a coarse, red plaid shawl
+      adjusted over her head and shoulders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran&rsquo;dad,&rdquo; she observed, never looking up, and speaking with her mouth
+      full of pins, &ldquo;Barton Smith say he kin set me down at Aunt Drusina&rsquo;s
+      house. Ye know she be ailin&rsquo;, an&rsquo; sent for me this evenin&rsquo;; but I hed no
+      way ter go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff looked sour enough at this intrusion; but he doubtless
+      imagined that this relative was no distant neighbor, and as he had need of
+      hearty aid and popular support, he offered no protest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a clearing sky without, and the wind was laid. The frenzy of the
+      storm was over, although rain was still falling. The little cavalcade got
+      to horse deliberately enough amid the transparent dun shadows and dim
+      yellow flare of light from open door and window. One of the mounts had
+      burst a girth, and a strap must be procured from the plow-gear in the
+      shed. Another, a steed of some spirit, reared and plunged at the lights,
+      and could not be induced to cross the illuminated bar thrown athwart the
+      yard from the open door. The official impatience of the delay was
+      expressed in irritable comments and muttered oaths; but throughout the
+      interval the guide, with his pallid, strained face, sat motionless in his
+      saddle, his rifle across its pommel, an apt presentment of indifference,
+      while, perched behind him, Meddy was continually busy in readjusting her
+      skirts or shawl or a small bundle that presumably contained her rustic
+      finery, but which, to a close approach, would have disclosed the
+      sulphurous odor of gunpowder. When the cluster of horsemen was fairly on
+      the march, however, she sat quite still, and more than once Seymour noted
+      that, with her face close to the shoulder of the guide, she was whispering
+      in his ear. What was their garnet he marvelled, having once projected the
+      idea that this late comer was, himself, the &ldquo;wolf&rsquo;s head&rdquo; whom they were
+      to chase down for a rich reward, incongruously hunting amidst his own hue
+      and cry. Or, Seymour again doubted, had he merely constructed a figment of
+      a scheme from his own imaginings and these attenuations of suggestion? For
+      there seemed, after all, scant communication between the two, and this was
+      even less when the moon was unveiled, the shifting shimmer of the clouds
+      falling away from the great sphere of pearl, gemming the night with an
+      incomparable splendor. It had grown almost as light as day, and the
+      sheriff ordered the pace quickened. Along a definite cattle-trail they
+      went at first, but presently they were following through bosky recesses a
+      deer-path, winding sinuously at will on the way to water. The thinning
+      foliage let in the fair, ethereal light, and all the sylvan aisles stood
+      in sheeny silver illumination. The drops of moisture glittered jewel-wise
+      on the dark boughs of fir and pine, and one could even discriminate the
+      red glow of sour-wood and the golden flare of hickory, so well were the
+      chromatic harmonies asserted in this refined and refulgent glamour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Barton Smith!&rdquo; called the sheriff, suddenly from the rear of the party.
+      There was no answer, and Seymour felt his prophetic blood run cold. His
+      conscience began to stir. Had he, indeed, no foundation for his suspicion?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Smith! <i>Smith</i>&rdquo; cried the irascible officer. &ldquo;Hey, there! Is the man
+      deaf!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not deef, edzac&rsquo;ly,&rdquo; Meddlesome&rsquo;s voice sounded reproachfully; &ldquo;jes a
+      leetle hard o&rsquo; hear in&rsquo;.&rdquo; She had administered a warning nudge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hey? What ye want?&rdquo; said the &ldquo;Wolf&rsquo;s Head,&rdquo; suddenly checking his horse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you any idea of where you are going, or how far?&rdquo; demanded the
+      officer, sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just acrost the gorge,&rdquo; the guide answered easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I heard he had been glimpsed in a hollow tree. That word was telephoned
+      from the cross-roads to town. It was the tree the skeleton was in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That tree? It&rsquo;s away back yander,&rdquo; observed one of the posse, reluctant
+      and disaffected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he has quit that tree; he is bound for up the gorge now,&rdquo; said the
+      guide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I suppose you know, from what I was told,&rdquo; said the sheriff,
+      discontentedly; &ldquo;but this is a long ja&rsquo;nt. Ride up! Ride up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Onward they fared through the perfumed woods. The wild asters were
+      blooming, and sweet and subtile distillations of the autumnal growths were
+      diffused on the air. The deer are but ill at road-making,&mdash;such
+      tangled coverts, such clifty ledges, such wild leaps; for now the path
+      threaded the jagged verge of precipices. The valley, a black abyss above
+      which massive, purplish mountains loomed against a sky of pearly tints,
+      was visibly narrowing. They all knew that presently it would become a mere
+      gorge, a vast indentation in the mountain-side. The weird vistas across
+      the gorge were visible how, craggy steeps, and deep woods filled with
+      moonlight, with that peculiar untranslated intendment which differentiates
+      its luminosity in the wilderness from the lunar glamour &lsquo;of cultivated
+      Scenes&mdash;something weird, melancholy, eloquent of a meaning addressed
+      to the soul, but which the senses cannot entertain or words express.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a sudden halt, the guide dismounted. The girl still sat on the
+      saddle-blanket, and the horse bowed his head and pawed. The posse were
+      gazing dubiously, reluctantly, at a foot-bridge across a deep abyss. It
+      was only a log, the upper side hewn, with a shaking hand-rail held by
+      slight standards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we got to cross this?&rdquo; asked the officer, still in the saddle and
+      gazing downward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ef ye foller me,&rdquo; said the guide, indifferently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But he was ahead of his orders. He visibly braced his nerves for the
+      effort, and holding his rifle as a balancing-pole, he sped along the light
+      span with a tread as deft as a fox or a wolf. In a moment he had gained
+      the farther side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They scarcely knew how it happened. So unexpected was the event that,
+      though it occurred before their eyes, they did not seem to see it. They
+      remembered, rather than perceived, that he stooped suddenly; with one
+      single great effort of muscular force he dislodged the end of the log,
+      heaved it up in the air, strongly flung it aside, whence it went crashing
+      down into the black depths below, its own weight, as it fell, sufficing to
+      wrench out the other end, carrying with it a mass of earth and rock from
+      the verge of the precipice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horses sprang back snorting and frightened; the officer&rsquo;s, being a
+      fine animal in prime condition, tried to bolt. Before he had him well in
+      hand again, the man on the opposite brink had vanished. The sheriff&rsquo;s
+      suspicions were barely astir when a hallooing voice in the rear made
+      itself heard, and a horseman, breathless with haste, his steed flecked
+      with foam, rode up, indignant, flushed, and eager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whyn&rsquo;t ye wait for me, Sher&rsquo;ff? Ye air all on the wrong track,&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;Boyston McGurny be hid in the skellington&rsquo;s tree. I glimpsed him thar
+      myself, an&rsquo; gin information.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The sheriff gazed down with averse and suspicious eyes. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s all this!&rdquo;
+       he said sternly. &ldquo;Give an account of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me!&rdquo; exclaimed the man in amazement. &ldquo;Why, I&rsquo;m Barton Smith, yer guide,
+      that&rsquo;s who. An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m good for five hundred dollars&rsquo; reward.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the sheriff called off the pursuit for the time, as he had no means of
+      replacing the bridge or of crossing the chasm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meddlesome&rsquo;s share in the escape was not detected, and for a while she had
+      no incentive to the foolhardiness of boasting. But her prudence diminished
+      when the reward for the apprehension of Boyston McGurny was suddenly
+      withdrawn. The confession of one of the distillers, dying of tuberculosis
+      contracted in prison, who had himself fired the fatal shot, had
+      established the alibi that McGurny claimed, and served to relieve him of
+      all suspicion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He eventually became a &ldquo;herder&rdquo; of cattle on the bald of the mountain and
+      a farmer in a small way, and in these placid pursuits he found a contented
+      existence. But, occasionally, a crony of his olden time would contrast the
+      profits of this tame industry at a disadvantage with the quick and large
+      returns of the &ldquo;wild cat,&rdquo; when he would &ldquo;confess and avoid.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That&rsquo;s true, that&rsquo;s all true; but a man can&rsquo;t holp it no ways in the
+      world whenst he hev got a wife that is so out-an&rsquo;-out meddlesome that she
+      won&rsquo;t let him run ag&rsquo;in&rsquo; the law, nohow he kin fix it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <div style="height: 6em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Wolf&rsquo;s Head, by
+Charles Egbert Craddock             (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
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+</pre>
+  </body>
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