16. Paid By Promise
With return of his outer attention to Old Tom, Parker saw that any immediate outburst from that source was averted. The sudden fury was smoothing away, the color receding from his face, the angry lips straightening into lines of guile.
"Likely you-all didn't intend to rile me," said the mountaineer, "but you'd best not ask for bumblings again. Naturally I ain't got nary none, account of the law."
A glance within showed Parker an anxious, admonitory face. Yet he persisted toward his goal.
"Far from wishing to rile you, sir, Pd like to confide in you as I would in a friend. There seems to be a report circulating through the region that Pm a revenue officer sent by the government to make trouble for blockaders."
Old Tom's nod was nothing more than admission that he had heard the report.
"This you will realize," he from the North continued, "to be even more cruel than absurd when you know that I am a man of independent income whose chief fault lies in having partaken too freely of the mead that cheers. I have come to the Blue Ridge to get a grip on my thirst. My presence here this morning, unarmed and unattended, when I've been warned of your suspicions of me, ought to argue for the truth of what I claim."
''It might - and then again it mightn't." The patriarch showed that he was not to be Impressed by talk alone.
"Here is my membership in the Satyrs - a famous New York club to which no revenuer could belong. Will you oblige me by looking It over?"
After the mountaineer had scrutinized the credential protected by isinglass on the Inside of the card-case extended and had returned It with only a grunt by way of comment, Parker proceeded more boldly.
"You are generally believed throughout the countryside, Friend Metcalf, to distil a grade of com whisky which loses nothing of strength or flavor from the fact that it pays no tax to the Federal government. Wait just a minute before you flare up again - hear me through!"
The last exclamation had been drawn out by the glower which the mountaineer had focused upon him.
"Get a lavish with your explanatloning, then!"
Parker proceeded to do so, but not before risking a glance into the living-room. The sight within stirred his heart and voice.
The girl still stood just beyond her father's range of vision with the revolver broken, the cartridges extracted and In her hand. This she showed him as, with significant gesture, she dropped the shells into the pocket of her dress, snapped to the gun, and returned It, harmless, to Its nail upon the door frame. Again he noticed that In none of her movements was there sign of that state of nerves under which she was supposed to be suffering.
With a thrill he realized that Vernaluska was not allied against him, rather was acting for him, was safeguarding him against possible untoward Impulses of her Irascible parent. What a girl she was, he saluted her in thought - what a resourceful, pally sort of girl !
Metcalf was widely said to be a man of discrimination and fair play, he was meanwhile suavely urging. That was why he had risked the morning visit to his home In the teeth of their past unpleasantness. Was he likely to have come were he really a revenuer? Would he not have tried slinking methods out of regard for his personal safety?
"There's no safe concluding about revenue slicks, whether or no," the old man drawled, now quite dispassionately. "Some of the cuckolds are right pert of tongue, while others are just fool-cussed."
"Well, sir, I'm neither pert nor fool-cussed, as you'll realize when you know me better," Parker insisted. "The government doesn't know me except for a bit of Income tax, and I'll never be a collector. I come to you as a private customer, ready to pay your price. The delivery can take any form you select for your safety until after I've established your confidence. What do you say, sir?"
The mountaineer arose suddenly from the seat which he had been straddling. Parker straightened In his, nerved himself for a possible attack. He glanced toward the nail in the door-frame. Upon It the revolver hung, looking no more innocuous than before It had been robbed. The girl had disappeared.
Enjoyment of the situation surged up In Parker.
He hoped that the wily old law-breaker would make a lunge for the gim, level it upon him, pull the hammer down upon an empty cylinder.
But the attack for which Metcalf had arisen proved not to be one of physical force. After rounding his chair to the porch edge, he flicked a caterpillar off a cluster of geranium-blooms, then turned the chair around, sat down upon it and very deliberately crossed his legs.
"You-all have got a plumb convincing way of putting things," he remarked. "If what you do was as convincing as what you say "
A loudening, singing tenor voice Interrupted. From around the house the words of the song became distinguishable:
"Feed the furnace and stir the mash;
Play the ace ; you get the hash."
An expectant lOok soothed the severity of Metcalf's face. "It's Sandyred. Makes them up him1 self, them songs."
Into view strode the son of the "cantankerous" clan - a replica of what Old Tom must have been as a youth.
"Sandy, this here's Parker from out North," said the old man by way of Introduction. "Glad you happened along, for he's in a powerful hurryi to be moving toward home, and you can show hlmj the short cut to the ford."
"I can that," agreed the youth, with uncomplimentary alacrity.
"What do you think, son?" asked Tom, with a chuckle. "He came up here hoping to buy popskull - heard that we Metcalfs made It ag'In' the law."
"Hell's fire, dad!" The younger actor took an aggressive forward step. "And you're a-standing for a charge like that? Let the cuss so much as hint such "
"Easy, son. He ain't charging nothing; just hankering to feed a thirst, so he says." The parent's voice hardened. "But I'm just telling you, Mr. Parker, we-all know enough about them polite customs you was mentioning not to look forward to another call from you until after we've returned this one of yourn."
After expressing the hope that his social overture might soon be met in kind, Parker started down the road with Sandyred. He did not feel altogether cheated of the result of his visit. No matter how rude the mountain girl had been to him, there would be an argument in her favor every time he remembered the appearance of that brown hand and the removal of the bullets.
They stopped short in the road. A woman's cry of distress from somewhere in the woods to their right had cut the placid air.
"You'll have to project your own way, stranger. I've got to go !"
With the next breath the youth sprang into the underbrush.
The noise of his departure crackled back to Parker, who hesitated, tempted to follow. But second thought started him again toward the ford. He had "projected" enough for one day. Whatever the cause of alarm, it could be no affair of his. He was contemplating the next move of the liquor quest, some dozen rods down the road, when the thicket parted and Vernaluska Metcalf stumbled down the bank. Her face was flushed, eyes dilated, hair gloriously streaming. Her left hand was pressed against her heart, her right was held behind.
"Miss Metcalf!" cried Parker. "I hope nothing has happened. We heard a scream, and your brother departed like a shot."
"It was mine, that scream - a signal. I've got to make a hustle back," she panted, "and explain that I had an extra bad attack of the all-overs."
"But why the ruse?"
"I wanted to give you-all something unbeknownst to the folks. See what I managed to lug here on the run, dodging Sandyred!"
At sight of that which she produced from behind her back he took several hurried steps toward her.
"A jug!" he exclaimed. "For me?"
She nodded. "A gallon jug and full of corn juice. I'd go slow on it if I was a paleface like you-uns. It's a sight more powerful than what you've been used to out North."
The surprise of it, the joy of it, the almost divine relief of it, made Parker well-nigh Inarticulate.
"Why, you blessed girl!" he finally managed. "To think that you - How can I ever thank you? Let me relieve you of "
She stepped back, frowning, the jug again behind her.
"You can't relieve me until you pay - leastwise you can't unless you're the scum that'd try taking it from me by force. I'd give you a right smart tussle for it, at that."
Parker's advance stopped, his surge of warmth toward her checked by her evident mercenary tendency. His hand sought his ever-ready wallet.
'Til pay anything the stuff's worth to you," he said.
''Oh, it ain't money that can buy this, so put back your container. It's a promise I want you to pay."
"A promise, Miss Metcalf ?"
"Yes, out-Norther, the sort of word-o;f-honor promise that gents keep or don't make. It is that you take yourself out of this region without delay."
"Take myself out? Would you mind telling me why?"
Vernaluska's eyes flashed. "You must have sight worse than Teetotaler not to see that you're in danger every minute you stay."
"From your father?"
She shook her head. "My father fights fair, but there are them that don't. Rex Currie has reasons of his own for hating you, and he's an enemy to worry any man. I know Rex. He won't give you a chance to fight back. Promise you'll take yourself off, and the jug's yours."
"Guess I'll have to do without my bumblings today," said he wearily. "I can't seem to get worried over Rex Currie's dislike, and I may make my own chance to fight back when his attack comes."
"Then" - she hesitated, studying the stubbornness of him - "I'll swap that promise for another. I'll give over the jug if you'll agree never to come to our place again."
"Never come again?" He paused to look Into the insistent eyes of her.
More than anything else in the world he wanted that jug. He had not realized the dynamic power of the desire for what it held that had grown In Its absence until It was so nearly within his grasp.
There came momentary diversion. Up the road sidled Teetotaler, a broken rein explaining his escape from the bush to which he had been tied. By the time Parker had retrieved his straying mount his decision was made.
"ril give you my word of honor not to come to see you," he said, "subject to your release of the jug. If you win promise to come to see me at the Fallaway cabin."
The look she returned to his was searching, almost mandatory In Its effort to learn his trustworthiness. Then, all unexpectedly, an Impish smile dimpled her face, her lilting laugh sounded.
"Don't you worry none; I'll be seeing you - more than you hke, maybe."
"You mean that you promise?"
"Why, man alive, I've sworn that to others than you!"
Before he could question the cause of her sudden levity, she had set the jug In the road before him and disappeared, as swiftly as her brother had lately done, up the bank and into the thicket.
Exasperated by this last of her gazelle-like fleeings, he started to follow her, but was halted by a sudden doubt. In the roadway Teetotaler was sniffing at the cork of the jug. Parker joined him.
Had the girl been honest In her exchange of promises or was she playing a joke whose brutality she could not know? Was the test of his new-found continence at last in his possession?
His heart beating as It rarely had beat for woman, he removed the cork.