  There was a light in the lower right room of the nearest building. Straight to the door of this room they went and the next second found them blinking at the light and at the same time looking into one of the most saintly faces they had ever seen, the motherly face of Miss Bordell, who had for many years devoted her life to the education of mountain children. The girls quickly told their story. Almost before they knew it, having been assured that here they would be quite safe from any intruders, they found themselves tucked in between a pair of white sheets with Hallie sleeping peacefully between them. “We’re safe,” Marion whispered to herself, “but the mystery is not solved. To-morrow—to-mor—” Her thoughts were never finished. Her weary brain had closed shop for the night. “It’s the most unusual thing I have ever heard of,” said the school principal after she had heard the girls’ story the next morning. “You say they were regular mountain folks?” “Yes, ma’am,” Patience nodded. “That’s what makes it so unusual,” said the elderly lady, wrinkling her brow. “Mountain folks aren’t given to stealing and kidnapping. That sort of crime seems almost foreign to their nature. I’ll tell you what we will do. The Circuit Judge, John Bascomb, happens to be down at the village. We’ll go down and talk it over with him. It’s only a mile.” So down the road to the village they marched, Marion, Patience, little Hallie, and their benefactress. They had reached the first cabin that stood by the creek road when of a sudden Patience, pulling excitedly at the principal’s sleeve, whispered hoarsely: “That’s them there! They’re the three men that carried Hallie away!” A single glance told Marion she was right. So great was her fear of them that her first impulse was to snatch up Hallie and flee. But her better judgment prevailed. Surely here they were safe. The men, apparently without having seen them, turned up a side path to enter a cabin. “Are you sure those are the men?” asked the principal. “Yes, yes!” the girls answered in unison. “Let’s hurry, then.” A short time later they were telling their story to Judge Bascomb, a kindly old man. “First thing,” he said after they had finished, “is to find out who the men are. Come on out and show me the cabin they entered.” “H’m,” he mused as he sighted the cabin. “Can’t be Long Jim. That’s his cabin. He’s laid up with rheumatism. Must be some of his friends. Here, John Henry,” he called to a barefoot boy. “Who’s visiting at Long Jim’s?” “Reckon hit’s Black John Berkhart and his brother, Blinkie Bill, and mebby Hog Farley.” “H’m,” said the judge. “I know ’em. We’ll just step over there.” “No, no,” said Marion, hanging back. “I—I couldn’t.” “That’s all right, little girl,” the judge reassured her. “They’re just plain mountain folks. I can’t understand their actions of yesterday, but that’s what we’re going over there to find out.” The men in the cabin appeared a little startled at sight of the judge and the girls, but having motioned them to seats around the crude fireplace, they sat there in stoical silence. “Black John,” said the judge in a friendly tone, “I’m told you took this little girl from her home yesterday and carried her away over the mountains.” “I ’low you’re right informed, Jedge.” “Don’t you know that’s kidnapping?” “You kin name it, Jedge. I ain’t much on larnin’ nohow.” “Why did you do it?” “Jedge, it’s this way,” the black-eyed mountaineer settled himself to explain. “That little gal there is the last of her clan, the Cawoods, the fightenest clan that I reckon ever lived in these here mountings. They fit us and we fit them, and I reckon, Jedge, if’n ther’d been more Cawoods and less Berkharts there wouldn’t been any Berkharts left, same’s there’s only one Cawood left, an’ that’s little Hallie. “Jedge,” the mountain man paused to stare moodily at the fire, “us folks is plum tired fightin’. ’T’ain’t no satisfaction to go out a hoein’ corn an’ makin’ crops on these here rocky hillsides when you know like as not some feller’s lying up there in the bresh above you waitin’ for to put daylight through you. And Jedge, long’s there’s a Cawood a-livin’ in these here mountings, even a little one like Hallie, there’s some one goin’ to rise up to shoot and kill us. So, Jedge, we took her an’— “No, Jedge,” he protested as he saw the look of horror on the faces about him, “we didn’t aim to kill her. Reckon there ain’t no mounting folk anywhar mean as that. But, Jedge, out of the mountings thar’s places I’ve heard tell of, big places whar they keep orphans. Hallie bein’ a true orphan, we ’lowed we’d jest take her out thar and give her another name. She’d grow up and never know she was a Cawood, and not nobody else’d know, either, and then thar’d be peace in these here mountings.” For a moment there was silence, then the judge spoke. “Black John,” he said, “you can’t make right by doing a wrong. Hallie was not kin to you. You had no right to lay one finger upon her. You believe in God, don’t you?” The mountaineer dropped his head. “God never told you that men would be raised up to kill your people for Hallie’s sake. It was the powers of evil and darkness that told you that. It’s not true. “As for this crime you have committed,” he said in a stern voice, “you are accountable to the law. You should perhaps be bound over to the grand jury, but you did the thing in ignorance—your motives were not criminal motives. If those who were wronged are disposed to forgive you, and if you give me your word of honor that you will never molest the child again, I’ll do my best to see that you go free.” He turned to Patience and Marion. “One thing else I want to know,” said Marion, her voice husky with emotion as she turned to face Black John. “Why did you seize my friend at the back of Pine Mountain and hold her against her will?” “That, Jedge,” said the mountain man, talking to the judge instead of Marion, “was part and parcel of the same plan. Little Hallie were a stayin’ at their cabin then and we thought quite natural we might trade the older girl fer the leetle one that wasn’t only just a mounting girl noways.” The judge looked at Marion as much as to say: “That is explained. Shall we hold them?” Marion frowned. She knew mountain ways and mountain courts, knew how seldom justice was done. She recalled a word Ransom Turner had let fall. “Reckon a word of honor given by a mountain man’s a heap site surer than a jury trial.” “I’ll take his word, if he gives it freely,” Marion said. “Black John, do we have your word of honor?” “Jedge, hit’s mighty hard to see through; plumb hard, but I reckon hit’s right. I give my word, Jedge.” The judge bowed. Then, followed by the judge, they all filed out of the cabin. At ten o’clock, in her room at the whipsawed cabin, with great events hanging in the air all about her, Marion closed her weary eyes for a few winks of sleep. Little Hallie slept peacefully beside her. |
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