The Code of the Mountains. Charles Neville Buck
Spooner rose, and stretched his arms. His food and rest had refreshed him, and the red spots had gone out of his cheeks.
"What for," he inquired coolly, "air ye a-tellin' me all this-hyar business?"
The Deacon's grave eyes clouded, but otherwise his expression did not change.
"We figured you'd be interested, son. You were the first Spooner they ever put behind penitentiary bars. This man did it. We figured that when we came to punish these fellers—" He broke off with a shrug of his shoulders.
"Ye 'lowed ye mout git me ter kill 'em?" Newt spoke with absolutely no betrayal of interest.
"Jest the lawyer, Newt," interpolated Red Newton ingratiatingly. "He's your'n. Hit's yore right ter punish him."
The late convict wheeled on the speaker, and his face blackened and lowered.
"The hell hit is!" he screamed. "I hain't aholden nothin' 'g'inst ther lawyer. He didn't do nothin' but what he had a license ter do. I knows who I'm atter. You folks wants two men killed, an' you wants me ter be ther feller ter go ter the penitentiary fer doin' hit. What the hell did any of ye do fer me last time? What the hell do I owe any of ye, wuth goin' back thar fer?"
For a moment, a general silence of dazed astonishment followed the outburst. It was the Deacon who broke it at last.
"All right, son," he said almost gently. "Every man accordin' to his lights. I reckon you ain't goin' to tell anybody what you've heard?"
Newt snorted contemptuously.
"I reckon ye knows thar hain't no danger of thet." "Hit 'pears like," interposed Red Newton with an apologetic shrug to the others, "hit 'pears like the penitenshery hes done broke ther boy's sperit. Some folks is thet-away, but hit don't hardly seem like no Spooner."
Newt wheeled on him.
"Thet's a low-down lie," he stormed. "Nothin' hain't broke my sperit. I hain't scairt of them, ner of you, ner of hell! I knows what I'm atter. Thar's a feller I'm ergwine ter kill, but hit hain't this one. I'm tendin' ter my own business?—not your'n. You-all got me inter one killin', an' not a blame one of ye stood by me atterwards. Now all of ye kin go ter hell!"
He glared around the group for a moment and left the house, and no one made an effort to stop him. Newt meant to take up his journey within an hour or two. He, too, had a vengeance planned, but the man he sought was back there in the mountains, and there was no use in "foolin' away time an' money here."
Yet an hour later he walked past the court-house and the large hotel just beyond it, and abruptly, opposite the hotel door, he halted. He had seen a buggy drive up and stop, and in the buggy was the girl who had brought him to town. He had forgotten her, but now he paused across the street and stood gazing. He gazed simply because she was the first living soul who had ever been kind or gracious to him, and, precisely as the blind man may feel the sunlight and know that it is pleasant, he glowed dumbly under the remembrance of her smile.
Then as he stood looking, a young man came out of the hotel with his hat lifted and his face smiling. In his eyes was an expression easy to read, an eager, glad welcome as he crossed the pavement with extended hand and climbed into the buggy beside the girl. The young man was well dressed and bore himself like a gentleman, yet he was a mountaineer by parentage and birth.
Newt's posture stiffened into rigidity. The color left his face and his eyes began to burn balefully. … He had just recognized Henry Falkins.
For an instant, the erstwhile convict stood paralyzed with astonishment, then the blood in his arteries began pounding a fanfare of triumph. Wheeling, he went rapidly toward the restaurant of Mr. Cawsler. There he would find some of the clansmen, and one of them could lend him a pistol. If they refused, he would ravish a weapon from them with his bare hands. After that, if they let him have ten minutes for his own, he would join them in any schemes, conspiracies or crimes that interested them. For him, ten minutes would be sufficient. His walk broke into a trot at which the passers-by laughed. A yokel in a hurry is always amusing.
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