[figure description] Page 406.[end figure description]

SQUIRE PELT had by this time completed his
transaction with the Dutchman, and mounted his
wagon, with Guy's farm in his great-coat pocket.
He spread the garment on the seat, and sat on it; the whole
man, the entire Elphaz, so to speak, twinkling exultantly, as
he arranged the pocket at his side, where he could feel the
precious lump, into which fifty acres of mountain-slope, with
buildings, had been by the alchemy of a shrewd trade converted.

“I'm sharp!” he seemed to be congratulating himself as
he drove away. “I've outwitted Guy this time. He could
take Lucy out of my hands; and he's welcome. It took
me to come up with 'em! He'll never see this money, any
more than she'll see the color of old Ben Arlyn's California
gold. Ten to one, Arlyn never'll come back: he'll die in
the mines, or on the Isthmus, or get killed in a quarrel, —
he's a rash fellow, — and that'll be the last of him. And even
if he should happen to get home alive, — why, I shall have

[figure description] Page 407.[end figure description]

warning. The most he can make of it, any way, is a breach of
trust; and I can fight him with the law: the colonel';; help
me, and like the fun. I must manage to choke off Abner
somehow. If I'm going to rise in life, I mustn't have him
hanging to my coat-tails. I will rise: I'll be the richest
man in this town. Talk about honesty being the best policy!
I should be a miserable plodding lawyer all my days if I tried
to be honest. As it is — Go 'long!” cried Pelt to his horse.
“It's going to rain like great guns, and I've no umbrella.”

He was undecided which way to go, — over the brow of the
mountain, by Biddikin's, or round by the South Road. This
was the easiest route, but the longest.

“I'll let the nag take his choice,” said Elphaz. “There
ain't much difference, as I see. Yes, there is a difference.
It's going to rain, and I'll go the nearest way.”

Upon so slight a circumstance hangs the destiny of a man!
To avoid a shower! — as if that was any thing to a good-feeling
fellow like Elphaz. The thought does indeed occur to
him that there are other disagreeable things, besides wet clothes
and a saturated cuticle, which a man might reasonably wish
to forego.

“But, if I meet Guy, I'll tell him the farm ain't to be sold
till to-morrow; and I'll have the money in the bank by that
time.”

Whip, whip! The clouds thicken, and roll portentously.
On the summit of the mountain-road an awful scene presents
itself. The whole valley before him is darkened. The

[figure description] Page 408.[end figure description]

forests seem hushed with terror. The mountain-tops have a
sense of what is coming: they listen, and breathlessly wait.
The far western peaks, and the peaks still beyond, are like
pillars, over which hangs and sways a terrible black canopy.
Some pierce and tear the ebon mass; some are half buried in
rushing curtains of rain; and about some the lightnings play
like serpents.

The sun could hardly yet be down; but already it was fast
growing dark.

“I shall get a ducking, sure as fate!” the lawyer mutters,
seriously troubled; as if a man might not be wet by something
more tragical than rain-water!

As he passes Biddikin's, — the huge solemn crags glooming
dreadfully over the woods on the left, — the pygmy of the
place runs out, and screams, —

“Pelt! Squire Pelt! wait a minute! Here's Jehiel Hedge
wants to ride: he has hurt his foot, and can't walk.”

“I'm in a hurry!” growls Pelt, and whips along, to the
wrath of the little doctor.

Ah! had you been a little more obliging, Elphaz! For
was not there a sort of providence in it that Jehiel should
sprain his ankle that afternoon, and claim a passage in Pelt's
buggy? Pelt, in denying him, denied also his own guardian
angel, if he had one. For surely, had Jehiel gone with Elphaz,
what happened that night would not have happened. It
mattered little indeed to Jehiel; but oh the difference to
Elphaz!

[figure description] Page 409.[end figure description]

“Think I'm going to stop for a clod-hopper, when a storm
like this is coming? It'll be pitch-dark now going through
the woods. Lord, what lightning!”

He stopped, however, long enough to put on his coat, and
to feel the golden lump in the pocket thump against his thigh.
Then whip, whip! It was down-hill now all the way; a
little too much so perhaps, in places, for rapid driving. And
now the woods are entered, — the thick woods, where it was
impossible to hasten; and now the heavens are sealed utterly
with the sable seal of the night and the storm; and
now — what is this?

The horse comes to a quick halt, and absolutely declines to
proceed. Pelt tries in vain to prevail upon him; scolds him,
whips him, jerks him by the reins. Bonny groans, but will
not budge. It is very dark, and growing darker every instant.
The woods all round are fearfully empty of sound,
save where the torrent pours; and black, save where the distant
lightning winks. And now the loosened thunder topples
down upon them, bursting in their tops; and tumbles
crumbling away in the far muffled silences; followed by slow
pattering rain.

“Go 'long, you fool!” cries Balaam, cudgelling the poor
beast. “I'll learn you to balk this way!”

Whack, whack! echo blows of the whip-stock in the hollow
woods. The animal, instead of advancing, backs the buggy
round against a tree. The angel of the Lord, whose sword
is the quick-drawn lightning, stands before; and Balaam

[figure description] Page 410.[end figure description]

knows it not. Is the beast afraid of the lightning? Balaam
will see.

He gets out of his wagon, and goes to the animal's head;
feels carefully about with hand and foot; discovers no impediment;
and begins to lead cautiously forward. Just then, the
Ethiop face of the sky yawns from ear to ear, — a chasm of
flame, by the dazzle of which he sees the woods before him all
ablaze for a wild swift instant, and the red-lighted road
stretching sinuous away among the still sentinel trees. Then
the darkness shuts again like a trap, enclosing Balaam and
beast.

But in that fiery instant he has seen much. The picture
is still in his brain, — the red-lighted road before him, with
neither log nor limb across it. Why isn't the way clear,
then? What ails the brute? “Come along!” he mutters;
and the brute comes willingly now: when, lo! Balaam himself
is stopped by an invisible sword across his throat.

A sword, — or something else; a rigid branch, perhaps.
He puts up his hand, and clutches — a rope.

And now the traveller grows suddenly superstitious. Not
the darkness, not the moaning brook, not the scanty rain dismally
pattering, not sheet-lightning and horribly crashing
thunder, with the circumstance of the beast's mysterious stopping,
struck such fear to his soul as this little rope tightened
over the road. A tree fallen there would not have appalled
him, — that might have happened in the natural course of
things; but a rope suggests contrivance, and means mischief.

[figure description] Page 411.[end figure description]

And now Elphaz recalls the former time when his horse
committed an extraordinary freak in the night, and remembers
that Mad was at the bottom of it; and feels it in his
stirring flesh and hair that Mad is also concerned in this.

The many threats of his hot-blooded young rival; the
convenience of the time and place for private murder; the
tempting gold in his pocket, thumping his thigh as he walks,—
all this, rushing over him, makes his knees weak and his
blood chill. And devoutly he wishes now that he had been
a little more accommodating to Jehiel; realizing in a literal
manner the truth, that the mercy which man withholds from
his neighbor he withholds far more fatally from himself.

He feels hurriedly along the rope, and finds it fastened to a
tree. He can stoop under it easily enough; but it is needful
to untie it for his horse. This he is struggling to do; when—
flash! — and by the momentary illumination he sees a man
standing not three yards off, groping in the buggy with his
hands. Darkness drops like the daguerrotypist's cloth over
the camera; but the view is taken, and the plate of memory
will retain it faithfully till the judgment-day.

What does the man want, groping there in the buggy? Is
it fortunate, or the reverse, that the lawyer has the gold in
his pocket? Panic seizes him: he will abandon his horse,
and run. He pauses only to feel what his coat has caught
upon; for something holds him. He hastily grasps it. It is
a MAN'S HAND!

“Who are you? what do you want?” bursts the hoarse
voice of Elphaz.

[figure description] Page 412.[end figure description]

Straightway he is hurled upon the ground, throttled, and
robbed, by brigands two or more. To one of these he clings
with desperate grip. He rises to his knees with him, and
will not be shaken off. There they struggle; and now
once more the broad lightning glares, and the two see each
other face to face.

Face to face, the enemies, for one fearful white instant of
time!

Then deluging thunder drowns all sound, and the blackness
of darkness shrouds what is done afterwards.

Assuredly it is an evil time for Elphaz Pelt. Crafty
man! is this, then, thy hour of triumph? and was it so easy
to circumvent thy fellows, nay, God himself, who has declared
thou shalt not steal, and that thou shalt love thy neighbor?

Retribution has certainly come to thee this night; as, swift
or slow, it comes to all evil-doers at last. For now, though the
bandits may be baffled, another danger awaits; yea, is coming!
Old Ben Arlyn is after you! Old Ben Arlyn, stung
to fury by his wrongs, is tramping up the road, in the wild
night, amid the dropping thunderbolts, as wild as they, —
tramping on and on, to hunt this villain of villains called by
your name.

You, who thought him far away, and he so near! Having
encountered Abner, he has learned from him the whole
maddening story, — how you received the letters enclosing

[figure description] Page 413.[end figure description]

those which Lucy never got; and how you appropriated
to your own avarice the dowry which would have insured for
her an honorable marriage, and saved her from shame. For
Guy — as Abner explained — appeared sufficiently to love
her, and but for the colonel's threat of disinheritance, and the
fear of bringing her to poverty, would undoubtedly have made
her his wife. The colonel, then, and you, Elphaz, are chiefly
responsible. But the colonel was an open enemy; whilst
you were a treacherous knave. Thanks to red-head's friendship
or fear, Guy's offence is placed second on the list; and
against you, first and foremost, the full torrent of the father's
anger is let loose.

Tramp, tramp, he comes! At sight of the glimmering windows
of Jehiel's house, where he knows are his daughter and
her child, his mighty heart is wrung. He dares not trust
himself to see them. He will spare her, his idol, desecrated,
but still dear. So, gulping down his sorrow and his wrath,
he hurries on amid the dropping thunderbolts, eager to do his
dread errand.

Cunning one! do you chuckle now at your signal success
in life? Do you exult at the fine prospect ahead, and laugh
at your duped victims? Nay, you may as well die where you
are as meet this powerful impetuous father in his rage.

Yet it is a terrible thing to be cut off suddenly in one's sins,
almost with the grimace of craftiness on one's face!

Tramp, tramp, he comes! Through the thick wall of darkness
and the occasional chinks of lightning; now losing the

[figure description] Page 414.[end figure description]

path, and reeling among the tree-trunks, till his way is illumined;
amid the noise of the water-course, of the echoing
thunder-claps, and of the storm in the tossing branches, —
tramp, tramp, tramp, — he comes!

What he will do with Pelt when he finds him, it is not probable
that he has once paused to consider. To hold him
by the throat, and say, “Thus and thus did you!” is the hot
surging purpose of his soul. Let us hope he would not murder
Pelt!

For more than a mile above Jehiel's he keeps on, meeting
no one, — not a living being on that lonesome road. But
hark! there was a sound! — a scream suddenly suppressed.
He listens. A hoarse terrified tongue breaks loose at intervals;
now low, quick tones of hurried conference; then
a pistol-shot; and now hoofs and rattling wheels, as a horse
dashes past him with a bounding vehicle. A faint gleam
shows him the reins loosely flying, and the vehicle empty;
and the frightened animal plunges on into the blind night.

But the voices! they have suddenly ceased. Arlyn quickens
his pace, running by the lightning. Through the brushwood
he has seen a human figure retreating. Has Pelt recognized
him by a flash, and fled? Blank darkness impedes
his pursuit; and all at once he stumbles.

What's this, then, lying like a log in the middle of the
road?

He feels it with his hands. He touches something wet, —
not the wet from which umbrellas would have saved you, O

[figure description] Page 415.[end figure description]

hapless Elphaz! For rain is cold; but this is a thick tepid
pool. Good God! it is a murdered man outstretched here
under the trees!

Elphaz, is it you? Answer! Late so glib of tongue, are
you now so silent? It is too terrible! This cannot be our
twinkling, lively friend Elphaz!

Rough Ben Arlyn has seen death in too many shapes to be
very superstitious about it; but there is something indescribably
shocking here. A corpse not yet cold, and he in utter
darkness stumbling over it! His brain is bewildered. The
wheels of his impetuosity have been too suddenly blocked by
this horrid clay. His reason seems deserting him. He remembers
his own fierce thoughts, and for a moment dreams that
he is the murderer! This frightful illusion is heightened
when once more the heavens open, and the forest is filled with
a glare brighter than noonday, showing in its dazzling intenseness
every minute shrub and twig, the sprinkled dust
of the road, the lifeless form outstretched, the blue cravat
rumpled, and the ghastly, staring features, cross-eyed even
in death.

p730-421

Previous section

Next section