“Won’t you be jest dressed to kill an’ cripple when you get that on! Don’t it set her off, Jeffy Ann?”

The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated ecstasy.

“I don’t know,” debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a looking-glass by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. “’Pears to me this one’s too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn’t come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly.”

Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and in her own hands.

“This is a powerful pretty red bow,” she assented promptly. “I can take it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I believe you’re right; and red certainly does go with yo’ hair and eyes.” Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer.

And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned, deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a massive, sculptural line; her dark eyes—the large, heavily fringed eyes of a dryad—glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to the ripe red of the full lips.

In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big, coarse country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, “Far over to one side, honey—jest the way they’re a-wearin’ them in New York this minute.”

The buyer once more studied her mirror, and its dumb honesty told her that she was beautiful. Then she looked about for some human eyes to make the same communication.

“What’s a-goin’ on over yon at the Co’t House?” she inquired with languid interest, looking across the open square.

“They’s a political speakin’,” explained the other. “Creed Bonbright he wants to be elected jestice of the peace and go back to the Turkey Tracks and set up a office. Fool boy! You know mighty well an’ good they’ll run him out o’ thar—or kill him, one.”

Although the girl had herself ridden down from Turkey Track Mountain that morning, and the old Bonbright farm adjoined her own, the news held no interest for her. She wished the gathering might have been something more to her purpose; but she solemnly paid for the hat, and with the cheap finery on her stately young head, which had been more appropriately crowned with a chaplet of vine leaves, moved to the door. She hoped that standing there, waiting for the boys to bring her horse, she might attract some attention by her recently acquired splendour.

She looked up at the Court House steps. The building was humbly in the Greek manner, as are so many of the public structures in the South. Between its great white pillars, flaking paint and half-heartedly confessing their woodland genesis, stood a tall young man, bareheaded. The doubtful sunlight of a March day glinted on his uncovered yellow hair. He was speaking rapidly in a fervid fashion that seemed beyond the occasion; in his blue eyes shone something of the fanatic’s passion; his bearing was that of a man who conceives himself to have a mission and a message.

Judith looked at him. She heard no word of what he was saying—but him she heard. She heard the high, vibrant voice, saw the fair hair on the upflung head, the rapt look in the blue eyes with their quick-expanding pupils. Suddenly her world turned over. In a smother of strange, uncomprehended emotions, she was gropingly glad she had the new hat—glad she had it on now, and that Mrs. Staggart herself had adjusted it. On blind impulse she edged around into plainer view, pushing freely in amongst the fringe of men and boys, an unheard-of thing for a well taught mountain girl to do, but Judith was for the moment absolutely unconscious of their humanity.

“You never go a-nigh my people,” cried Bonbright in that clear thrilling tenor that is like a trumpet call, “you never go a-nigh them with the statute—with government—except when the United States marshal takes a posse up and raids the stills and brings down his prisoners. That’s all the valley knows of the mountain folks. The law’s never carried to anybody up there except the offenders and criminals. The Turkey Track neighbourhoods, Big and Little, have got a mighty bad name with you-all. But you ought to understand that violence must come when every man is obliged to take the law into his own hands. I admit that it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with us now—what else could it be? And yet we are as faithful to each other, as virtuous, and as God-fearing a race as those in the valley. I am a mountain man, born and bred in the Turkey Tracks; and I ask you to send me back to my neighbours with the law, that they may learn to be good citizens, as they are already good men and women.”

Upon the word, there broke out at the farthest corner of the square an abrupt splatter of sound, oaths, cries, punctuated by the swift staccato of running feet. The ringing voice came to a sudden halt. Out of a little side street which descended from the mountain, a young fellow burst into view, running in long leaping bounds, his hands up. Behind him lumbered Dan Haley the United States marshal, a somewhat heavy-set man, puffing and panting, yelling, “Halt! halt! halt!” and finally turning loose a fusillade of shots aimed high over the fleeing lad’s head. There was a drawing back and a scattering in every direction.

“Hey, Bonbright!” vociferated a man leaping up from the last step where he had been sitting, pointing to where the marshal’s deputy followed behind herding five or six prisoners from the mountains, “Hey, Bonbright! There’s some of your constituency—some God-fearing Turkey-Trackers—now, but I reckon you won’t own ’em.”

“I will!” shouted Bonbright, whirling upon him, and one got suddenly the blue fire of his hawk-like eye with the slant brow above. “They are my people, and the way they’re treated is what I’ve been trying to talk to you-all about.”

“Well, you better go and take them fellers some law right now,” jeered his interlocutor. “Looks like to me they need it mighty bad.”

“That’s just what I’m about,” answered Bonbright. “God knows they’ll get no justice unless I do. That’s my job,” and without another word or a look behind him he made his way bareheaded through the group on the steps and down the street.

Meantime the pursued had turned desperately and dodged into the millinery store whence Judith Barrier had emerged a little earlier. Instantly there came out to the listeners the noise of falling articles and breaking glass, and the squeals and scufflings of the women. The red-faced marshal dived in after his quarry, and emerged a moment later holding him by one elbow, swearing angrily. Creed Bonbright came up at the instant, and Haley, needing some one to whom he could express himself, explained in voluble anger:

“The damned little shoat! Said if I’d let him walk a-loose he’d give me information. You can’t trust none of them.”

Bonbright laid a reassuring touch on the fugitive’s shoulder as Haley fumbled after the handcuffs.

“I ain’t been into no stillin’, Creed!” panted the squirming boy.

“Well, don’t run then,” admonished Bonbright. “You’ve got no call to. I’ll see that you get justice.”

While he spoke there wheeled into the square, from a nearby waggon-yard, two young mountaineers on mules, one leading by the bridle-rein a sorrel horse with a side-saddle on it. At sight of the marshal and those with him, an almost imperceptible tremor went through the pair. There was a flicker of nostril, a rounding of eye, as their glance ran swiftly from one to another of Haley’s prisoners. They were like wild game that winds the hunter.

“St! You Pony Card, is that them?” whispered Haley, sharply nudging the prisoner he held. “Turn him a-loose, Bonbright; I’ve got him handcuffed now.”

The boy—he was not more than sixteen—choked, reddened, held down his head, studying the marshal’s face anxiously from beneath lowered flax-coloured brows.

“Yes, them’s Andy and Jeff Turrentine,” Bonbright heard the husky, reluctant whisper. “Now cain’t I go?”

The newcomers were beyond earshot, but the by-play was ominous to them. The lean young bodies stiffened in their saddles, the reins came up in their hands. For a moment it seemed as if they would turn and run for it. But it was too late. Without making any reply Haley shoved his prisoner into the hands of the deputy and with prompt action intercepted the two and placed them under arrest. Bonbright observed one of the boys beckon across the heads of the gathering crowd before he dismounted, and noted that some one approached from the direction of the Court House steps and received the three riding animals. In the confusion he did not see who this was. Haley spoke to his deputy, and then drew their party sharply off toward the jail, which could be used temporarily for the detention of United States prisoners. To the last the young Turrentines muttered together and sent baleful glances toward Bonbright, whom they plainly conceived to be the author of their troubles. Poor Pony Card plodded with bent head mutely behind them, a furtive hand travelling now and again to his eyes.

Such crowd as the little village had collected was following, Bonbright with the rest, when he encountered the girl who had come from the milliner’s shop. She stood now alone by the sorrel horse with the side-saddle on it, holding the bridle-reins of the two mules, and there was a bewildered look in her dark eyes as the noisy throng swept past her which brought him—led in the hand of destiny—instantly to her side.

“What’s the matter?” he asked her. “Can I help you?” And Judith who, in her perturbation, had not seen him before, started violently at the words and tone.

“They’ve tuck the boys,” she hesitated, in a rich, broken contralto, that voice which beyond all others moves the hearts of hearers, “I—I don’t know how I’m a-goin’ to get these here mules home. Pete he won’t lead so very well.”

“Oh, were you with the men Haley arrested?” ejaculated Bonbright.

“Yes, they’re my cousins. I don’t know what he tuck ’em for,” the young, high-couraged head turned jailward; the dark eyes flashed a resentful look after the retiring posse.

“It looks like to me, from what Haley said, that there’s nothing against them,” Bonbright reassured her. “But they’re likely to be held as witnesses—that’s the worst about this business.

“I was going over there right now to see what can be done about it—being a sort of lawyer. But let me help you first. I’m Creed Bonbright—reckon you know the name—born and raised on Big Turkey Track.”

Judith’s heart beat to suffocation, the while she answered in commonplace phrase, “I shorely do. My name is Judith Barrier; I live with Uncle Jephthah Turrentine, on my farm. Hit’s right next to the old Bonbright place. We’ve been livin’ thar more’n four years. I hate to go back and tell Uncle Jep of the boys bein’ tuck; and that big mule, Pete, I don’t know how I’m a-goin’ to git him out o’ the settlement, he’s that mean and feisty about town streets.”

“I reckon I can manage him,” Bonbright suggested, looking about. “Oh, Givens!” he called to a man hurrying past. “When you get over there ask Haley not to take any definite action—I reckon he wouldn’t anyhow. I’m going to represent the prisoners, and I’ll be there inside of half an hour. Now let me put you on your horse, Miss Judith, and I’ll lead the mules up the road a piece for you.”

And so it came about that Judith sprang to the back of the sorrel nag from Creed Bonbright’s hand. Creed, still bareheaded, and wholly unconscious of the fact, walked beside her leading the mules. They passed slowly up the street towards the mountainward edge of Hepzibah, talking as they went in the soft, low, desultory fashion of their people.

The noises of the village, aroused from its usual dozing calm, died away behind them. Beyond the last cabin they entered a sylvan world all their own. While he talked, questioning and replying gravely and at leisure, the man was revolving in his mind just what action would be best for the prisoners whose cause he had espoused. As for Judith, she had forgotten that such persons existed, that such trivial mischance as their arrest had just been; she was concerned wholly with the immediate necessity to charm, to subjugate the man.

A rustic belle and beauty, used to success in such enterprises, in the limited time at her command she brought out for Creed’s subduing her little store of primitive arts. She would know, Pete suggesting the topic, if he didn’t despise a mule, adding encouragingly that she did. The ash, it seemed, was the tree of her preference; didn’t he think it mighty sightly now when it was just coming into bloom? His favourite season of the year, his favoured colour, of such points she made inquiry, giving him, in an elusive feminine fashion, ample opportunity to relate himself to her. And always he answered. When all was spoken, and at the first sharp rise she drew rein for the inevitable separation, she could not have said that she had failed; but she knew that she had not succeeded.

“Ye can jest turn Pete a-loose now,” she told him gently. “He’ll foller from here on.”

Bonbright, on his part, was not quite aware why he paused here, yet it seemed cold and unfriendly to say good-bye at once, Again he assured her that he would go immediately to the jail and find what could be done for her cousins. There was no more to be said now—yet they lingered.

It was a blowy, showery March day, its lips puckered for weeping or laughter at any moment, the air full of the dainty pungencies of new life. Winged ants, enjoying their little hour of glory, swarmed from their holes and turned stone or stump to a flickering, moving grey. About them where they stood was the awakening world of nature. Great, pale blue bird-foot violets were blooming on favoured slopes, and in protected hollows patches of eyebright made fairy forests on the moss, while under tatters of dead leaves by the brookside arbutus blushed. Above their heads the tracery of branches was a lace-work overlaid with fanlike budding green leaves, except where the maples showed scarlet tassels, or the Judas tree flaunted its bold, lying, purple-pink promise of fruitage never to be fulfilled.

Could two young creatures be wiser than nature’s self? It was the new time; all the gauzy-winged ephemerÆ in the moist March woods were throbbing with it, buzzing or flashing about seeking mates and nectar. The earth had wakened from her winter sleep and set her face toward her ancient, ardent lover, the sun. In the soul of Judith Barrier—Judith the nature woman—all this surged strongly. As for the man, he had sent forth his spirit in so general a fashion, he conceived himself to have a mission so impersonal, that he scarce remembered what should or should not please or attract Creed Bonbright.

Judith dreaded lest he make his farewells before she had from him some earnest of a future meeting. He could not say good-bye and let her leave him so! It seemed to her that if he did she should die before she reached the mountain-top. Dark, rich, earth-born, earth-fast, material, she looked down at Creed where he stood beside her, his hand on the sorrel’s neck, his calm blue eyes raised to hers. Her gaze lingered on the fair hair flying in the March breeze, above a face selfless as that of some young prophet. Her eager, undisciplined nature found here what it craved. Coquetry had not availed her; it had fallen off him unrecognised—this man who answered it absently, and thought his own thoughts. And with the divine pertinacity of life itself she delved in the ancient wisdom of her sex for a lure to make him rise and follow her. It was not bright eyes nor red lips that could move or please him? But she had seen him moved, aroused. The hint was plain. Instantly abandoning her personal siege, she espoused the cause of her bodiless rival.

“I—I heard you a-speakin’ back there,” she said with a little catch in her breath.

Bonbright’s eyes returned from the far distances to which they had travelled after giving her—Judith Barrier, so worthy of a blue-eyed youth’s respectful attention—a passing glance. She replied to his gaze with one full of a meaning to him at that time indecipherable; nevertheless it was an ardent, compelling look which he must needs answer with some confession of himself.

“You wouldn’t understand what I was trying to tell about,” he began gently. “Since I’ve been living in the valley, where folks get rich and see a heap of what they call pleasure, I’ve had many a hard thought about the lives of our people up yonder in the mountains. I want to go back to my people with—I want to tell them—”

The girl leaned forward in her saddle, burning eyes fixed on his intent face, red lips apart.

“Yes—what?” she breathed. “What is it you want to say to the folks back home? You ort to come and say it. We need it bad.”

“Do you think so?” asked Bonbright doubtfully. “Do you reckon they would listen to me? I don’t know. Sometimes I allow maybe I’d better stay here where the Judge wants me to till I’m an older man and more experienced.”

He studied the beautiful, down-bent face greedily now, but it was not the eye of a man looking at a maid. His thoughts were with the work he hoped to do. Judith’s heart contracted with fear, and then set off beating heavily. Wait till he was an old man? Would love wait? Somebody else would claim him—some town girl would find the way to charm him. In sheer terror she put down her hand and laid it upon his.

“Don’t you never think it,” she protested. “You’re needed right now. After a while will be too late. Why, I come a-past your old home in the rain last Wednesday, and I could ’a’ cried to see the winders dark, and the grass all grown up to the front door. You come back whar you belong—” she had almost said “honey”—“and you’ll find there is need a-plenty for folks like you.”

“Well, they all allow that I’ll be elected next Thursday,” Creed assented, busying himself over the lengthening of Beck’s bridle, that she might lead the mule the more handily. “And if I am I’ll be in the Turkey Tracks along in April and find me a place to set up an office. If I’m elected——”

“Elected! An’ ef yo’r not?” she cried, filled with scorn of such a paltry condition. What difference could it make whether or not he were elected? Wouldn’t his hair be just as yellow, his eyes as blue? Would his voice be any less the call to love?

He smiled at her tolerantly, handing up the lengthened strap.

“Well, I don’t just rightly know what I will do, then,” he debated.

“But you’re a-comin’ up to the Turkey Tracks anyhow, to—to see yo’ folks,” persisted Judith with a rising triumph in her tone.

“Yes,” acquiesced Bonbright, “I’ll come up in April anyhow.”

And with this assurance the girl rode slowly away, leading Beck, the now resigned Pete following behind. All the sounds from the valley were gathered as in a vast bowl and flung upward, refined by distance. A moment she halted listening, then breasted the first rise and entered that deep silence which waits the mountain dweller. The great forest closed about her.

Creed Bonbright stood for a moment in the open road looking after her. Something she had conveyed to him, some call sent forth, which had not quite reached the ear of his spirit, and yet which troubled his calm. He lifted his gaze toward the bulk of the big mountain looming above him. He passed his hand absently through his fair hair, then tossed his head back with a characteristic motion. It was good to know he was needed up there. It was good to know he would be welcomed. So far the girl had made her point. After this the mountains and Judith Barrier would mean one thing in the young man’s mind. As the shortest way to them both, he turned and walked swiftly down toward the settlement and to the undertaking which there awaited him.