371

THE SHERIFF SCORES.

LANCE CLEAVERAGE lay in the cavern above the East Fork of Caney for nearly two weeks. The search for him was persistent, even savage, the reason given being that he had attempted the life of an officer of the law. Flenton Hands had been taken to the house of his kinsman the sheriff, and the bulletins sent out from his bedside were not encouraging; yet Lance's people clung to such hope as they might from the fact that the man was not yet dead.

"No, Flent ain't gone yet," Beason would rumble out when questioned on the subject, "but he's mighty low—mighty low. He's liable to drop off any time; and who'd take Lance Cleaverage then, I'd like to know? Not me. No, nor not any man I've met, so far. The thing for us to do is to git that thar wild hawk of a feller while they's nothing agin him more than assault with intent to kill, or some such. When he smells hemp in the business, he's goin' to make it too dangerous for anybody to go after him, and his folks'll git him out o' them mountains and plumb away to Texas, or Californy."

This it was which, urging haste, gave the hunt its flavor of 372 savagery. The empty cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel had been ransacked again and again; it was known to be watched day and night; the espionage on the house of Kimbro Cleaverage and that of the Gentrys was almost as close. But Callista and Sylvane continually evaded it at night, and kept the fugitive in his cave well provided. In spite of their care, Lance pined visibly. His arm was almost healed; he suffered from no definite bodily ailment, save a low, fretting fever; but his manner was one of heavy languor, broken by random breaths of surface irritability.

Then came a Saturday night when Beason's men, watching a trail, surprised and took Sylvane laden with food and necessaries plainly intended for the man in hiding. They rose up from behind some rocks by the roadside and had the boy in their clutches almost before he knew to be alarmed. It was a raw, gray February evening, drawing in sullenly to night, with a spit of rain in the air, freezing as it fell, stinging the cheek like a whip-lash, numbing toes and fingers. The boy looked desolately up the long road which he had intended to forsake for a safer trail at the next turning. He glanced at his laden mule, and answered at random the volleyed questions flung at him. Finally Beason, heavy, black-bearded, saturnine, silenced them all and opened out, with the dignity of his office,

"Now see here, Sylvanus Cleaverage, these gentlemen with me is 373 sworn officers of the law. We know whar you're a-goin' at, and who you're a-goin' to. They's no use to dodge."

"I ain't a-dodgin'," retorted Sylvane, and in the tilt of his head against the weak light of the western sky one got his full resemblance to Lance. "If you know so mighty well and good right where I was a-goin' at, go thar yo'self," he concluded, desperate, at the end of everything. "What you pesterin' me about it for? With your kind leave I'll turn around and walk myself back home."

"No you won't," Beason countered. "Ain't I told you that we're all officers of the law, and I'm sheriff of this here county, and I aim to do my duty as sworn to perform it? What you got to do is to jest move along in the—in the direction you was a-goin', and lead us to Lance Cleaver-age. You do that, or you'll wish you had."

It was a lack of tact to threaten even this younger one of the Cleaverage boys.

"I'll never do yo' biddin'," Sylvane told him with positiveness, "not this side of the grave. As for makin' me wish I had, you can kill me, but that won't get Buddy for you. He's whar you can't take him. You'll never find him; an' if you did, no ten men could take him whar he's at. An' if I was killed and put out of the way, there's them that would still feed him and carry him the news."

"The good God A'mighty! Who wants to kill you, you fool boy?" 374 demanded Beason testily. "There's been too much killin' did; that's the trouble."

"Oh—Flent's dead then?" inquired Sylvane on a falling note, searching the faces before him in the dusk.

"Will you lead us to whar Lance is at, or will you not?" demanded Beason monotonously, dropping the flimsy pretense that they had any knowledge of the fugitive's hiding place.

"I'll go with you to Pappy," Sylvane compromised. "Whatever Pappy says will be right."

So they all turned and went together to the old Cleaverage place, the boy on his laden mule riding in their midst. They found Kimbro at home sick. He got up, trembling, from his bed and dressed himself.

"Gentlemen," he said to them, appearing in their midst, humbled, broken, but still self-respecting, "I wish my son Lance would surrender himself up to the law—yes, I do. His health is giving way under what he has to endure. But lead you to him I will not, without I first get his consent to do so. If you have a mind to stay here—and if you will give me yo' word of honor not to foller nor watch me, Sheriff Beason—I will go myself and see what he has to say; and I'll come back and tell you."

Beason held a prolonged whispered consultation with his three 375 men. At the end of it he turned and said to the father half surlily,

"Go ahead, I give you my word to neither foller nor watch."

The men sprawled themselves about Roxy Griever's hearthstone, warming luxuriously, dreading to go forth again into the raw February weather. Roxy followed her father to the door.

"Pappy," she pleaded, clinging to his arm. "Hit'll be the death of you to go abroad this-a-way, sick like you air, and all."

"No, Roxana—no, daughter," Kimbro replied, drawing her gently out to the porch, whence they could see Sylvane getting a saddle on to Satan. "I feel as though I might be greatly benefited if only this matter of Lance's can be fixed up. I consider that they trust me more than another when they consent to let me go this way."

Roxy's eye rolled toward the doorway and dwelt upon the officers of the law who were to remain her guests till her father's return. Across her mind came dim visions of heroic biblical women who had offered deadly hospitality to such. Step by step she followed Kimbro to the gate, whispering,

"Don't you git Lance to give himself up, Pappy—don't do it. You tell him Sylvane is a-goin' to fetch extra ammunition from Hepzibah, and if he can hold out till Spring, these fellers is 376 bound to git tired and turn loose the job. He can slip away then; or they'll be wore out, an' ready to make some sort o' terms with the boy."

"Daughter," said the old man, softly, "your brother would be dead before Spring."

"Well, he'll shore die," cried the poor woman, in a sort of piercing whisper, "ef they take him down to jail in the settlement. Pappy, you know Lance ain't never goin' to live—in the jail!"

And Kimbro left her sobbing at the gate, as he rode away on the black horse, his frail, drooping figure a pathetic contrast to the young animal's mettlesome eagerness.