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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: 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+survived, but the fact is obsolete," said Seymour, who was both a prig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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