237

LANCE CLEAVERAGE'S SON.

SUMMER lasted far into fall that year, its procession of long, fair, dreamful days like a strand of sumptuous beads. At the last of November came a dash of rain, frost, and again long, warm days, with the mist hanging blue in the valleys as though the camp-fires of autumn smoked in their blaze of scarlet and gold, their shadows of ochre and umber.

"But we're goin' to ketch it for this here," Roxy Griever kept saying pessimistically. "Bound to git about so much cold in every year, and ef you have summer time mighty nigh on up to Christmas, hit'll freeze yo' toes when it does come."

Callista held to her resolution to send no message to the sawmill on North Caney. But the family had debated the matter, consulting with Lance himself, and agreeing to summon him home, if possible, in ample season. At his sister's gloomy weather predictions, Sylvane grew uneasy lest the time arrive and Lance be storm-stayed in Dagget's camp. He almost resolved to go and fetch him at once, and run the chance of good coming from it. But the spell of pleasant weather and a press of work put it out 238 of his mind. Then came a day when the sun rose over low-lying clouds into a fleece of cirri that caught aflame with his mounting. The atmosphere thickened slowly hour by hour into a chill mist that, toward evening, became a drizzle.

"This here's only the beginning of worse," said Kimbro at the supper table. "Looks to me like we're done with Fall. To-morrow is the first day o' winter—and you'll see it will be winter sure enough."

At dawn next morning the wind rose, threshing the woods with whips of stringing rain. Stock about the lean little farms began to huddle into shelter. Belated workers at tasks which should have been laid by, found it hard to make head against the wild weather. The men at the sawmill kindled a wonderful radiance of hickory fire in the great chimney which Lance had built more to relieve his own restlessness than with any thought of their comfort.

"Why, consarn yo' time!" Blev Straley deprecated as he edged toward it. "A man cain't set clost enough to that thar fire to spit in hit!"

Sylvane knew when this day came, that he must go for his brother. About noon the rain ceased, and, with its passing, the wind began to blow harder. At first it leaped in over the hills like a freed spirit, glad and wild, tossing the wet leaves to the flying clouds, laughing in the round face of the hunter's moon which rose that evening full and red. But it grew and grew like the bottle genii drunken with strength; its laughter became 239 a rudeness, its pranks malicious; it was a dancing satyr, roughly-riotous, but still full of living warmth and glee. It shouted down the chimney; it clattered the dry vines by the porch, and wrenched at everything left loose-ended about the place; it whooped and swung through the straining forest. But by night it sank to a whisper, as Sylvane finally made his way into the camp. The next morning dawn walked in peace like a conquering spirit across the whiteness of snow, wind-woven overnight into great laps and folds of sculpture. As the day lengthened the cold strengthened. Again the wind wakened and now it was a wild sword song in the tree tops. Ice glittered under the rays of a sun which warmed nothing. It was a day of silver and steel. The frost bit deep; under the crisping snow the ground rang hard as iron. Wagons on the big road could be heard for a mile. As the two brothers passed Daggett's cow lot on setting forth, with its one lean heifer standing humped and shivering in the angle of the wall, Sylvane spoke.

"Reckon we'll have pretty hard work gettin' crost the gulch." He glanced at Lance's shoes. "This here snow is right wet, too—but hit's a freezin'. Maybe we'd better go back an' wait till to-morrow—hit'll be solid by then."

"I aimed to go to-day," said Lance, quite as if Sylvane had not come for him. "I'll stop a-past Derf's and get me a pair of shoes, Buddy."

No more was said, and they fared on. There was no cheerful sound 240 of baying dogs as they passed the wayside cabins. The woods were ghostly still. The birds, the small furry wild creatures crept into burrow and inner fastness, under the impish architecture of the ice and snow. Going up past Taylor Peavey's board shanty, they found that feckless householder outside, grabbling about in the snow for firewood.

"My wife, she's down sick in the bed," he told them; "an' I never 'lowed it would come on to be as chilly as what it is; an' her a-lyin' there like she is, she's got both her feet froze tol'able bad."

The Cleaverage brothers paused in their desperate climb to help haul down a leaning pine tree near the flimsy shack. They left the slack Peavy making headway with a dull axe whose strokes followed them hollowly as they once more entered the white mystery and wonder of the forest.

Arrival at Derf's place was almost like finding warmer weather. The half dozen buildings were thick and well tightened, and the piles of firewood heaped handy were like structures themselves.

"It's sin that prospers in this world," jeered the gentle Sylvane, blue with cold, heartsick as he looked at his brother's set face, poor clothing and broken shoes. Lance stepped ahead of the boy, silent but unsubdued, bankrupt of all but the audacious spirit within him.

Garrett Derf admitted them to the store, which was closed on 241 account of the bitter weather that kept everybody housed. But there was a roaring fire in the barrel stove in its midst, and after a time the silent Lance approached it warily, putting out first one foot and then the other. Derf, in an overcoat, stood across by the rude desk, fiddling somewhat uneasily.

"I hain't figured out your account, Cleaverage," he observed at last; "but I reckon you hain't much overdrawn. Likely you'll be able to even it up befo' spring—ef Miz. Cleaverage don't buy quite so free as what she has been a-doin'."

There was a long, significant silence, the wind crying at the eaves, and bringing down a fine rattle of dry snow to drum on the hollow roof above their heads. At first, neither of the half-perished men looked up, but Sylvane instinctively drew a little nearer to his brother.

"W'y—w'y, Mr. Derf," he began, with an indignant tremble in his boyish voice, "I've fetched every order for Sis' Callie, and packed home every dollar's worth she bought. Hit don't look to me like they could amount to as much as Lance's wages. Lance is obliged to have a pair of shoes."

Lance cast a fiery, silencing glance at his brother.

"I ain't obliged to have anything that ain't comin' to me," he said sharply. "Callisty's bought nothin' that wasn't proper. Ef she needed what was here—that's all right with me," and he turned and walked steadily from the room.

"Hey—hold on, you Lance Cleaverage!" Derf called after him. 242 "Thar you go—like somebody wasn't a-doin' ye right. I'll trust you for a pair of shoes."

In the wide-flung doorway, Lance wheeled and looked back at him, a gallant figure against the flash of snow outside—gallant in spite of his broken shoes and the tattered coat on his back.

"Go on. Buddy," he said gently, pointing Sylvane past him. Then he turned to Derf.

"You will?" he inquired of the man who, he knew, was trying to rob him. "You'll trust me? Well, Garrett Derf, it'll be a colder day than this when I come to you and ask for trust." And without another word he stepped out into the snow and set his face toward his father's house. He even passed the boy with a kind of smile, and something of the old light squaring of the shoulder.

"It ain't so very far now. Buddy," he said.

Sylvane followed doggedly. The last few miles were merely a matter of endurance, the rapid motion serving to keep the warmth of life in their two bodies.

Octavia Gentry, coming to the back door of the Cleaverage home, found Lance sitting on a little platform there, rubbing his feet with snow, while Sylvane crouched on the steps, getting off his own shoes.

"I thought I'd be on the safe side," Lance said in an unshaken voice. "They might be frost-bit and then they might not. No need 243 to go to the fire with 'em till I can get some feeling in 'em. How"—and now the tones faltered a little—"how is she?"

Octavia's horrified eyes went from the feet his busy hands were chafing with snow, to his lean, brown, young face, where the skin seemed to cling to the bone, and the eyes were quite too large.

"She's doin' well," choked the mother. "The doctor's been gone five hours past. It's a boy, honey. They're both asleep now. Oh, my poor Lance—my poor Lance!"

A sudden glow shone in the hazel eyes. Lance turned and smiled at her so that the tears ran over her face. He set down the lump of snow he had just taken up in his hand, and rising began to stamp softly.

"It's all right, mother," he said, in a tone that was almost gay. "I'm 'feared Sylvane's worse off."

But it appeared on inquiry that Sylvane's shoes had proved almost water tight, and that a brief run in the snow was all he wanted to send him in the house tingling with warmth. Roxy Griever, hearing the voices, had hurried out. Her troubled gaze went over Lance's half perished face and body, the whole worn, poor, indomitable aspect of him, even while she greeted him. With an almost frightened look, she turned and ran into the house, crying hastily,

"I'll have some hot coffee for you-all boys mighty quick." And 244 when he came limping in, a few minutes later, there was an appetizing steam from the hearth where Polly crouched beside Mary Ann Martha, whispering over a tale.

Dry foot-wear was found for the newcomers, and when they were finally seated in comfort at their food, both women gazed furtively at Lance's thin cheeks, the long unshorn curls of his hair, and Octavia wept quietly. When he had eaten and sat for a little time by the fire, he caught at his mother-in-law's dress as she went past, and asked with an upward glance that melted her heart,

"How soon may I go in thar?"

They both glanced toward the door of the spare room.

"I reckon you could go in right now, ef you'd be mighty quiet," Octavia debated, full of sympathy. "What do you say, Miz. Griever?"

"Well, we might take him in for a spell, I reckon," Roxy allowed dubiously, more sensible to the importance of the occasion, when men are apt to be hustled about and treated with a lack of consideration they endure at no other time.

Lance rose instantly; his hand was on the knob of the door before Roxy and Octavia reached him. When they did so, he turned sharply and cast one swift look across his shoulder. Without a word his mother-in-law drew the Widow Griever back. Lance 245 Cleaverage entered alone the chamber that contained his wife and son.

Closing the door softly behind him, he came across the floor, stepping very gently, lest he waken the sleepers in the big four-poster bed. When he stood at last beside the couch and looked down at them, something that had lived strong in him up to this moment died out, and its place was taken by something else, which he had never till then known.

He gazed long at Callista's face on the pillow. She was very thin, his poor Callista; her temples showed the blue veins, the long oval of her cheek was without any bloom. Beside her, in the curve of her arm, lay the little bundle of new life. By bending forward, he could get a glimpse of the tiny face, and a sort of shock went through him at the sight. This was his son—Lance Cleaverage's son!

With deft fingers he rolled the sheet away from the baby's countenance, so that he had a view of both, then sinking quietly to his knees, he studied them. Here was wife and child. Confronting him whose boyish folly had broken up the home on Lance's Laurel, was the immortal problem of the race. A son—and Lance had it in him, when life had sufficiently disciplined that wayward pride of his, to make a good father for a son. Long and silently he knelt there, communing with himself concerning this new element thrust into his plan, this candidate for citizenship on that island where he had once figured the bliss of dwelling 246 alone with Callista. Gropingly he searched for the clue to what his own attitude should now be. He had lived hard and gone footsore for the two of them. That was right, wasn't it? A man must do his part in the world. His own ruthers came after that.

He recognized this as the test. Before, it had been the girl to be won; the bride, still to be wooed. In outward form these two were already his; could he make and hold them truly his own? Could he take them with him to that remote place where his spirit abode so often in loneliness?

Callista's eyes, wide and clear, opened and fixed themselves on his. For some time she lay looking. She seemed to be adjusting the present situation. Then with a little whispered, childish cry, "Lance—oh, Lance!" she put out feeble arms to him, and he bent his face, tear-wet, to hers.