The Code of the Mountains. Charles Neville Buck
began to lose their slouch and his gait began to discard its prison shuffle for the long space-eating stride of the mountaineer.
At twilight, he came to a small house by the roadside. He had made a poor day's journey and, since night was falling, he turned in at the gate, as though it had been that of his own cabin. The place was shabby and its residents would have been characterized by the negroes as "po' white trash," but of social values the late Number 813 was ignorant. He saw only a roof and to the hills-man a roof is a shelter for whosoever may need it. Over the whitewashed fence clambering roses hung in profuse invitation, spicing the air with their fragrance.
Newt made his way to the door where a slatternly woman confronted him. She stared with disapproving eyes as she wiped her hands on her apron.
"Well, what do you want?" she challenged.
"I 'lowed ye'd let me stay all night—I'm a travelin'," replied the boy from Troublesome. He spoke simply and without cumbersome explanation. At home it would have been enough. But this woman only stared at him disapprovingly and as she took in his sullen visage and dusty suit of black, she recognized in him the erstwhile convict. With a suppressed scream she disappeared indoors.
Newt stood gazing without comprehension. That he might be turned away had not at first occurred to him. He had not yet grasped the essential differences between highland and lowland etiquette. He accordingly mounted the steps, crossed the porch and entered the door without knocking. In the mountains no one knocks on a door.
But at the threshold he met a tall man, who thrust him violently backward and squared himself across the opening. As Newt staggered backward and brought himself up against one of the porch supports, the householder surveyed him from crown to toe, and then, waving a hand outward, ordered briefly:
"Get the hell out of here, you damned jail-bird!"
For an instant the pardoned prisoner stood rigidly at gaze, while his eyes gathered wrath and his ugly snarl became wolf-like. Never had he been so greeted when claiming the traveler's prerogative of shelter from the night. But he was unarmed; moreover, he had a mission. He was going to kill one man. Killing men was expensive. It cost liberty and sometimes more. He could not waste animosity. So he veiled his anger and turned away. "I didn't 'low hit war a-goin' ter make ye mad," he mumbled as he went out again to the road. But he had learned his lesson. The mountaineer is as proud as he is ignorant, and, rather than risk another rebuff, he spent the night in a haystack, and the first rosy kindling of dawn found him again on his way; hungry, but setting his face stonily against the temptation to ask food.
The town of Winchester, like all the county seats of central Kentucky, breaks from its drowsy somnolence into a brief activity on court-day. On one Monday in each month the roads fill with an unaccustomed caravan of trade. Then under the hammer of the street auctioneer farm gear and live stock change hands; saloons and eating-houses do a banner business; politicians often harangue in the court-house square; friends renew old acquaintanceships and sometimes enemies renew old quarrels. But Winchester differs in one respect from its sister towns. The savor of a soil rich in chivalric traditions hangs here as it does over neighboring counties, and yet there is a difference. For Winchester is the nearest town of consequence to that foothilled borderland where the opulent bluegrass ends and the illiterate Cumberlands pile their grim ramparts. Here come the farther-wandering traders from the mountains; gaunt men with steady-gazing eyes and lean sinews and noiseless tread, to mingle with the louder-spoken and fuller-nourished brothers of the lowlands. It is on court-day that they come in greatest numbers. Here, too, live some of their own kin whom the menace of feudal reprisal has driven from their native slopes and "coves." With the mountaineer's strong yearning to remain as near as possible to his birthplace, these refugees have made new homes and new lives at the edge of the bluegrass where on occasion they can again see familiar faces. From Frankfort to Winchester is a matter of almost fifty miles, and Newt Spooner, who had taken up his homeward journey on a Saturday morning, saw its court-house cupola and church spires pierce the screen of foliage on the forenoon of Monday, which chanced to be the Monday allotted to Clark County for its court.
Newt was very tired and very hungry. His rebuff at the farmhouse had festered and rankled in his mind, and he had refused to ask hospitality again or to speak to any man, save for the curt asking of necessary directions. In Lexington he had bought himself a "snack," but because he was penuriously hoarding his small capital, he spent with a stinting hand and pushed onward unsatisfied.
Now, as he trudged wearily, he saw a figure by the roadside at his front. The figure was that of a negro, who sat on a rock pile in the sun, hammering limestone chunks into road metal. As the boy came nearer, he saw another detail. The black man, though unguarded, was a prisoner and he sat safe against the chance of escape by reason of the huge iron ball fastened to one ankle by a padlocked chain. The white man, himself so lately released from the penitentiary, halted. He had the mountaineer's chronic aversion to "niggers," but here was someone whom he could question and who was in no position to insult him.
"How fur mout hit be ter Winchester?" he demanded.
The negro, welcoming interruption and conversation, turned with his granite-headed hammer poised over a piece of limestone.
"It's a right-smart piece, if a man's leg-weary. It's about a mile, boss," he said.
A mile to the hills-man is nothing; a mere "whoop and a holler," yet now it seemed to the ex-convict as his informant said, "a right-smart piece." The glow which spotted his pallid face at the cheekbones told of a temperature. Through his limbs went a dull ache. From time to time he coughed. Finally the negro laid aside his rock-hammer, and gazed long and inquiringly at his silent visitor. He, too, recognized the state-bestowed clothing and its meaning.
"'Scuse me, boss," he suggested, "but yer done come from Frankfort, ain't yer?"
Newt Spooner nodded, but his eyes narrowed, discouraging interrogation.
"Was yer—was yer in de pen'tenshery, boss?"
The man chained to his rock pile doubted the wisdom of his question, but African inquisitiveness had mastered his better judgment.
Instantly he recognized his mistake. The boy from Troublesome was at once on his feet and his sallow face was distorted with anger. From his lips came profane volleys of abuse. Transported by rage, he took a step forward with clenched fists. The negro clambered to his feet, and, since he was anchored against flight, backed away defensively, waving his rock hammer.
Newt Spooner selected a huge fragment of the scaly limestone, and withdrew just beyond the range of hammer and chain; but as the negro, in a paroxysm of terror, fell pleadingly to his knees, he dropped the missile at his side.
"I hain't a-goin' ter bust in yore damned black head," he said in slow wrath, "because I got another job ter do. Thet's ther only reason why I hain't a-goin' ter kill ye." Then he turned into the road and took up his journey again.
Back there in the fastnesses of the hills, toward which he was making his way, the leaven of change was beginning to work, yeast-like. When he reached his destination he was to learn with surprise that he could not take up without interruption the story of his life: the story out of which pages standing for two years had been torn. Births and deaths and the giving in marriage were not the only things that had happened. Quietly a new agent had entered in; the agent of a patient spirit of education. This spirit came burning in the hearts of men and women from below, who realized that they must breast stubborn opposition and that they must adapt their methods to the life they sought to change. They must plant and nourish the new idea in the younger minds and they must not seek to alter in a twinkling a régime that had long been immutable.
But buried deep in the forestry of the tangled hills, far back from a railroad stood a group of buildings that seemed miracle-reared. They were stanch buildings of square-hewn logs, which in contrast to the ramshackle huts about them appeared to have been lifted from another world and transported on the winds of some benevolent cyclone. It was difficult to think of these houses as having been raised from solid foundation to level ridgepole so far from the facilities of transportation. Yet here in the wilderness stood the "college."
It