Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries Read online

  “That would be twenty miles through the Hills,” she said. “We could not get Rufus by the morn’s morn.”

  “No,” said Abner, “it would be three miles to Maxwell’s Tavern. Rufus is there tonight.”

  The big-nosed, red-haired woman drummed on the cloth with the tips of her fingers, and one knew what she was thinking. Her relentless will was the common talk. What she wished she forced with no concern.

  But the girl was afraid of Campbell. The man seemed evil to her. It was not evidenced in any act. It was instinct in the girl. She felt the nature of the man like some venomous thing pretending to be gentle until its hour. And this fear, dominant and compelling, gave her courage to resist the woman’s will.

  The long suit of Campbell for the girl was known to everybody, and the woman’s favor of it and the girl’s resistance. The woman foresaw what folk in the Hills would say, and she wished to forestall that gossip by the presence in her house of men whose word could not be gainsaid. If Abner and his brother Rufus were here, no report of pressure on the girl could gain belief.

  She knew what reports her dominating personality set current. She, and not her husband, was the head of their affairs, and with an iron determination she held to every Highland custom, every form, every feudal detail that she could, against the detritus of democratic times and ridicule, and the gain upon her house of poverty, and lean years. She was alone at that heavy labor. Allen Eliott was a person without force. He was usually on his cattle range in the mountains, with his big partner Campbell, or in the great drive, as now, to Baltimore. And she had the world to face.

  “That will be to wait,” she said, “and Campbell is in haste, and the bride is being made ready by the women, and the minister is got … to Maxwell’s Tavern!”

  Then she arose.

  “Well, I will make a bargain with you. I will send for Rufus, but you must gain Campbell over to the waiting. And you must gain him, Abner, by your own devices, for I will not tell him that I have sent out for a witness to the freedom of my niece in this affair. If you can make him wait, the thing shall wait until Rufus is come. But I will turn no hand to help.”

  “Is Campbell in the house?” said my uncle.

  “Yes,” she said, “and ready when the minister is come.”

  “Is he alone?” said Abner.

  “Alone,” she said, with a satirical smile, “as a bridegroom ought to be for his last reflections.”

  “Then,” replied my uncle, “I will strike the bargain.”

  She laughed in a heavy chuckle, like a man.

  “Hold him if you can. It will be a pretty undertaking, Abner, and practice for your wits. But by stealth it shall be. I will not have you bind the bridegroom like the strong man in the Scriptures.” And the chuckle deepened. “And that, too, I think, might be no easier than the finesse you set at. He is a great man in the body, like yoursel’.”

  She stood up to go out, but before she went, she said another word.

  “Abner,” she said, “you will not blame me,” and her voice was calm. “Somebody must think a little for these pretty fools. They are like the lilies of the field in their lack of wisdom; they will always bloom, and there is no winter! Why, man, they have no more brain than a haggis! And what are their little loves against the realities of life? And their tears, Abner, are like the rains in summer, showering from every cloud. And their heads crammed with folderol—a prince will come, and they cannot take a good man for that dream!” She paused and added:

  “I will go and send for Rufus. And when you have finished with your dinner, MacPherson will take you in to Campbell.”

  The woman was hardly gone before the old man slipped over to Abner’s chair.

  “Mon,” he whispered, “ha’e ye a wee drop?”

  “No liquor, MacPherson,” said my uncle.

  The old man’s bleared eyes blinked like a half-blinded owl’s.

  “It would be gran’, a wee drop, the night,” he said.

  “For joy at the wedding,” said my uncle.

  “Na, mon, na, mon!” Then he looked swiftly around.

  “The eagle ha beak and talons, and what ha the dove, mon?”

  “What do you mean, MacPherson?” said my uncle.

  The old creature peered across the table.

  “Ye ha gran’ shoulders, mon,” he said.

  My uncle put down his fork.

  “MacPherson,” he said, “what do you beat about?”

  “I wa borned,” he replied, “wi a cowl, and I can see!”

  “And what do you see?” inquired Abner.

  “A vulture flying,” said the old man, “but it is unco dark beneath him.”

  Again on this night every motion and every sign of motion disappeared from my uncle’s body and his face. He remained for a moment like a figure cut in wood.

  “A vulture!” he echoed.

  “Aye, mon! What ha the dove to save it?”

  “The vulture, it may be,” said my uncle.

  “The Red Eagle, and the foul vulture!” cried the old man. “Noo, mon, it is the bird of death!”

  “A bird of death, but not a bird of prey.” Then he got up.

  “You may have a familiar spirit, MacPherson,” he said coldly, “for all I know. Perhaps they live on after the Witch of Endor. It is a world of mystery. But I should not come to you to get up Samuel, and I see now why the Lord stamped out your practice. It was because you misled his people. If there is a vulture in this business, MacPherson, it is no symbol of your bridegroom. And now, will take me in to Campbell?”

  The old man flung the door open, and Abner went out into the hall. As he crossed the sill, a girl, listening at the door, fled past him. She had been crouched down against it.

  She was half-dressed, all in white, as though escaped for a moment out of the hands of tiring women. But she had the chalk face of a ghost, and eyes wide with fear.

  My uncle went on as though he had passed nothing, and the old Scotchman before him only wagged his head, with the whispered comment, “It wa be gran’, a wee drop, the night.”

  They came into a big room of the house with candles on a table, and a fire of chestnut logs. A man walking about stopped on the hearth. He was a huge figure of a man in middle life.

  A fierce light leaped up in his face when he saw my uncle.

  “Abner!” he cried. “Why does the devil bring you here?”

  “It would be strange, Campbell,” replied my uncle, “if the devil were against you. The devil has been much maligned. He is very nearly equal, the Scriptures tell us, to the King of Kings. He is no fool to mislead his people and to trap his servants. I find him always zealous in their interests, Campbell, fertile in devices, and holding hard with every trick to save them. I do not admire the devil, Mr. Campbell, but I do not find his vice to be a lack of interest in his own.”

  “Then,” cried Campbell, “it is clear that I am not one of his own. For if the devil were on my side, Abner, he would have turned you away from this door tonight.”

  “Why, no,” replied my uncle, with a reflective air, “that does not follow. I do not grant the devil a supreme control. There is One above him, and if he cannot always manage as his people wish, they shall not for that reason condemn him with a treasonable intent.”

  The man turned with a decisive gesture.

  “Abner,” he said, “let me understand this thing. Do you come here upon some idle gossip, to interfere with me in this marriage? Or by chance?”

  “Neither the one nor the other,” replied my uncle. “I went into the mountains to buy the cattle you and Eliott range there. I found you gone already, with the herd, toward Maryland. And so, as I returned, I rode in here to Eliott’s house to rest and to feed my horse.”

  “Eliott is with the drove,” said Campbell.

  “No,” replied my uncle, “Eliott is not with the drove. I overtook it on the Cheat River. The drivers said you hired them this morning, and rode away.”

  The man shifted his feet and lo
oked down at my uncle.

  “It is late in the season,” he said. “One must go ahead to arrange for a field and for some shocks of fodder. Eliott is ahead.”

  “He is not on the road ahead,” returned Abner. “Arnold and his drovers came that way from Maryland, and they had not seen him.”

  “He did not go the road,” said Campbell; “he took a path through the mountains.”

  My uncle remained silent for some moments.

  “Campbell,” said my uncle, “the Scriptures tell us that there is a path which the vulture’s eye hath not seen. Did Eliott take that path?”

  The man changed his posture. “Now, Abner,” he said, “I cannot answer a fool thing like that.”

  “Well, Campbell,” replied my uncle, “I can answer it for you: Eliott did not take that path.”

  The man took out a big silver watch and opened the case with his thumbnail.

  “The woman ought to be ready,” he said.

  My uncle looked up at him.

  “Campbell,” he said, “put off this marriage.”

  The man turned about.

  “Why should I put it off?” he said.

  “Well, for one reason, Campbell,” replied my uncle, “the omens are not propitious.”

  “I do not believe in signs,” said the man.

  “The Scriptures are full of signs,” returned Abner. “There was the sign to Joshua and the sign to Ahaz, and there is the sign to you.”

  The man turned with an oath.

  “What accursed thing do you hint about, Abner?”

  “Campbell,” replied my uncle, “I accept the word; accursed is the word.”

  “Say the thing out plain! What omen? What sign?”

  “Why, this sign,” replied Abner: “MacPherson, who was born with a cowl, has seen a vulture flying.”

  “Damme, man!” cried Campbell. “Do you hang on such a piece of foolery. MacPherson sees his visions in a tin cup—raw corn liquor would set flying beasts of Patmos. Do you tell me, Abner, that you believe in what MacPherson sees?”

  “I believe in what I see myself,” replied my uncle.

  “And what have you seen?” said the man.

  “I have seen the vulture!” replied my uncle. “And I was born clean and have no taste for liquor.”

  “Abner,” said Campbell, “you move about in the dark, and I have no time to grope after you. The woman should be ready.”

  “But are you ready?” said my uncle.

  “Man! Man!” cried Campbell. “Will you be forever in a fog? Well, travel on to Satan in it! I am ready, and here are the women!”

  But it was not the bride. It was MacPherson to inquire if the bride should come.

  My uncle got up then.

  “Campbell,” he said, in his deep, level voice, “if the bride is ready, you are not.”

  The man was at the limit of forbearance.

  “The devil take you!” he cried. “If you mean anything, say what it is!”

  “Campbell,” replied my uncle, “it is the custom to inquire if any man knows a reason why a marriage should not go on. Shall I stand up before the company and give the reason, while the marriage waits? Or shall I give it to you here while the marriage waits?”

  The man divined something behind my uncle’s menace.

  “Bid them wait,” he said to MacPherson.

  Then he closed the door and turned back on my uncle—his shoulders thrown forward, his fingers clenched, his words prefaced by an oath.

  “Now, sir,”—and the oath returned, —“what is it?”

  My uncle got up, took something from his pocket, and put it down on the table. It was a piece of lint, twisted together, as though one had rolled it firmly between the palms of one’s hands.

  “Campbell,” he said, “as I rode the trail on your cattle range, in the mountains, this morning, a bit of white thing caught my eye. I got down and picked up this fragment of lint on the hard ground. It puzzled me. How came it thus rolled? I began to search the ground, riding slowly in an ever-widening circle. Presently I found a second bit, and then a third, rolled hard together like the first. Then I observed a significant thing: these bits were in line and leading from your trail down the slope of the cattle range to the border of the forest. I went back to the trail, and there on the baked earth, in line with these bits of lint, I found a spot where a bucket of water had been poured out.”

  Campbell was standing beyond him, staring at the bit of lint. He looked up without disturbing the crouch of his shoulders.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “It occurred to me,” continued my uncle, “that perhaps these bits of lint might be found above the trail, as I had found them below it, and so I rode straight on up the hill to a rail fence. I found no fragment of twisted stuff, but I found another thing, Campbell: I found the weeds trampled on the other side of the fence. I got down and looked closely. On the upper surface of a flat rail, immediately before the trampled weeds, there was an impression as though a square bar of iron had been laid across it.”

  My uncle stopped. And Campbell said: “Go on.”

  Abner remained a moment, his eyes on the man; then he continued:

  “The impression was in a direct line toward the point on the trail where the water had been poured out. I was puzzled. I got into the saddle and rode back across the trail and down the line of the fragments of lint. At the edge of the forest I found where a log-heap had been burned. I got down again and walked back along the line of the twisted lint. I looked closely, and I saw that the fragments of dried grass, and now and then a rag-weed, had been pressed down, as though by something moving down the hillside from the trail to the burned log-heap.

  “Now, Campbell,” he said, “what happened on that hillside?”

  Campbell stood up and looked my uncle in the face. “What do you think happened?” he said.

  “I think,” replied Abner, “that some one sat in the weeds behind the fence with a half-stocked, square-barreled rifle laid on the flat rail, and from that ambush shot something passing on the trail, and then dragged it down the hillside to the log-heap. I think that poured-out water was to wash away the blood where the thing fell. I do not know where the bits of lint came from, but I think they were rolled there under the weight of the heavy body. Do I think correctly, eh, Campbell?”

  “You do,” said the man.

  My uncle was astonished, for Campbell faced him, his aspect grim, determined, like one who at any hazard will have the whole of a menace out. “Abner,” he said, “you have trailed this thing with some theory behind it. In plain words, what is that theory?”

  My uncle was amazed.

  “Campbell,” he replied, “since you wish the thing said plain, I will not obscure it. Two men own a great herd of cattle between them. The herd is to be driven over the mountains to Baltimore and sold. If one of the partners is shot out of his saddle and the crime concealed, may not the other partner sell the entire drove for his own and put the whole sum in his pocket?

  “And if this surviving partner, Campbell, were a man taken with the devil’s resolution, I think he might try to make one great stroke of this business. I think he might hire men to drive his cattle, giving out that his partner had gone on ahead, and then turn back for the woman he wanted, take her to Baltimore, put her on the ship, sell the cattle, and with the woman and money sail out of the Chesapeake for the Scotch Highlands he came from! Who could say what became of the missing partner, or that he did not receive his half of the money and meet robbery and murder on his way home?”

  My uncle stopped. And Campbell broke out into a great ironical laugh.

  “Now, let this thing be a lesson to you, Abner. Your little deductions are correct, but your great conclusion is folly.

  “We had a wild heifer that would not drive, so we butchered the beast. I had great trouble to shoot her, but I finally managed it from behind the fence.”

  “But the bits of lint,” said my uncle, “and the washed spot?”

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sp; “Abner,” cried the man, “do you handle cattle for a lifetime and do not know how blood disturbs them? We did not want them in commotion, so we drenched the place where the heifer fell. And your bits of lint! I will discover the mystery there. To keep the blood off we put an old quilt under the yearling and dragged her down the hill on that. The bits of lint were from the quilt, and rolled thus under the weight of the heifer.”

  Then he added: “That was weeks ago, but there has been no rain for a month, and these signs of crime, Abner, were providentially preserved against your coming!”

  “And the log-heap,” said my uncle, like one who would have the whole of an explanation, “why was it burned?”

  “Now, Abner,” continued the man, “after your keen deductions, would you ask me a thing like that? To get rid of the offal from the butchered beast. We would not wash out the bloodstains and leave that to set our cattle mad.”

  His laugh changed to a note of victory.

  “And now, Abner,” he cried, “will you stay and see me married, who have come hoping to see me hanged?”

  My uncle had moved over to the window. While Campbell spoke, he seemed to listen, not so much to the man as to sounds outside. Now far off on a covered wooden bridge of the road there was the faint sound of horses. And with a grim smile Abner turned about.

  “I will stay,” he said, “and see which it is.”

  It was the very strangest wedding—the big, determined woman like a Fate, the tattered servants with candles in their hands, the minister, and the bride covered and hidden in her veil, like a wooden figure counterfeiting life.

  The thing began. There was an atmosphere of silence. My uncle went over to the window. The snow on the road deadened the sounds of the advancing horses, until the iron shoes rang on the stones before the door. Then, suddenly, as though he waited for the sound, he cried out with a great voice against the marriage. The big-nosed, red-haired woman turned on him:

  “Why do you object, who have no concern in this thing?”

  “I object,” said Abner, “because Campbell has sent Eliott on the wrong path!”

  “The wrong path!” cried the woman.

  “Aye,” said Abner, “on the wrong path. There is a path which the vulture’s eye hath not seen, Job tells us. But the path Campbell sent Eliott on, the vulture did see.”