The Last Stetson | Page 7

bunches to the ground or tipped wiry blades over the running water.
Tightening a prop where some silvery jet was getting too large, he
lifted the tail-gate a trifle and lay down again on the platform near the
old wheel. Out in the mill-pond the water would break now and then
into ripples about some unwary moth, and the white belly of a fish
would flash from the surface. It was the only sharp accent on the air.
The chant of the katydids had become a chorus, and the hush of
darkness was settling over the steady flow of water and the low drone
of the millstones.
"I hain't afeerd," he kept saying to himself. "I hain't afeerd o' nothin' nor
no-body; but he lay brooding until his head throbbed, until darkness
filled the narrow gorge, and the strip of dark blue up through the trees
was pointed with faint stars. He was troubled when he rose, and
climbed on Rome's horse and rode homeward -so troubled that he
turned finally and started back in a gallop for Hazlan.
It was almost as Crump had said. There was no church in Hazlan, and,
as in Breathitt, the people had to follow Raines outside the town, and
he preached from the roadside. The rider's Master never had a
tabernacle more simple: overhead the stars and a low moon; close about,
the trees still and heavy with summer; a pine torch over his head like a
yellow plume; two tallow dips hung to a beech on one side, and
flicking to the other the shadows of the people who sat under them. A
few Marcums and Braytons were there, one faction shadowed on

Raines's right, one on his left. Between them the rider stood straight,
and prayed as though talking with some one among the stars. Behind
him the voice of the woman at her tiny organ rose among the leaves.
And then he spoke as he had prayed; and from the first they listened
like children, while in their own homely speech he went on to tell them,
just as he would have told children, a story that some of them had never
heard before. "Forgive your enemies as He had forgiven his," that was
his plea. Marcums and Braytons began to press in from the darkness on
each side, forgetting each other as the rest of the people forgot them.
And when the story was quite done, Raines stood a full minute without
a word. No one was prepared for what followed. Abruptly his voice
rose sternly-" Thou shalt not kill" ; and then Satan took shape under the
torch. The man was transformed, swaying half crouched before them.
The long black hair fell across the white scar, and picture after picture
leaped from his tongue with such vividness that a low wail started
through the audience, and women sobbed in their bonnets. It was
penalty for bloodshed -not in this world: penalty eternal in the next; and
one slight figure under the dips staggered suddenly aside into the
darkness.
It was Isom; and no soul possessed of devils was ever more torn than
his, when he splashed through Troubled Fork and rode away that night.
Half a mile on he tried to keep his eyes on his horse's neck, anywhere
except on one high gray rock to which they were raised against his
will-the peak under which he had killed young Jasper. There it was
staring into the moon, but watching him as he fled through the woods,
shuddering at shadows, dodging branches that caught at him as he
passed, and on in a run, until he drew rein and slipped from his saddle
at the friendly old mill. There was no terror for him there. There every
bush was a friend; every beech trunk a sentinel on guard for him in
shining armor.
It was the old struggle that he was starting through that night-the old
fight of humanity from savage to Christian; and the lad fought it until,
with the birth of his wavering soul, the premonitions of the first dawn
came on. The patches of moonlight shifted, paling. The beech columns
mottled slowly with gray and brown. A ruddy streak was cleaving the

east like a slow sword of fire. The chill air began to pulse and the mists
to stir. Moisture had gathered on the boy's sleeve. His horse was
stamping uneasily, and the lad rose stiffly, his face gray but calm, and
started home. At old Gabe's gate he turned in his saddle to look where,
under the last sinking star, was once the home of his old enemies.
Farther down, under the crest, was old Steve Brayton, alive, and at that
moment perhaps asleep.
"Forgive your enemies;" that was the rider's plea. Forgive old Steve,