Wolf's Head 1911

It might well be called the country of the outlaw, this vast tract of dense mountain forests and craggy ravines, this congeries of swirling torrents and cataracts and rapids. Here wild beasts lurked out their savage lives, subsisting by fang and prey,--the panther, the bear, the catamount, the wolf,--and like unto them, ferocious and fugitive, both fearsome and afraid, the man with a “wolf’s head,” on which was set a price, even as the State’s bounty for the scalps of the ravening brutes.

One gloomy October afternoon, the zest of a group of sportsmen, who had pitched their camp in this sequestered wilderness, suffered an abatement on the discovery of the repute of the region and the possibility of being summoned to serve on a sheriff’s posse in the discharge of the grimmest of duties.

“But he is no outlaw in the proper sense of the term. The phrase has survived, but the fact is obsolete,” said Seymour, who was both a prig and a purist, a man of leisure, and bookish, but a good shot, and vain of his sylvan accomplishments. “Our law places no man beyond the pale of its protection. He has a constitutional right to plead his case in court.”

“What is the reward offered to hale him forth and force him to enjoy that privilege--five hundred dollars?” asked Bygrave, who was a newspaper man and had a habit of easy satire.

“Of course he would never suffer himself to be taken alive.” Purcell’s vocation was that of a broker, and he was given to the discrimination of chances and relative values. “Therefore he is as definitely caput lupinum as any outlaw of old. Nobody would be held accountable for cracking his ‘wolf’s head’ off, in the effort to arrest him for the sake of the five hundred dollars. But, meantime, how does the fellow contrive to live!”

“Jes by his rifle, I reckon,” replied the rural gossip whom intrusive curiosity occasionally lured to their camp-fire. “Though sence that thar big reward hev been n’ised abroad, I’d think he’d be plumb afraid ter fire a shot. The echoes be mighty peart these dumb, damp fall days.”

The old jeans-clad mountaineer had a certain keen spryness of aspect, despite his bent knees and stooped shoulders. His deeply grooved, narrow, thin face was yet more elongated by the extension of a high forehead into a bald crown, for he wore his broad wool hat on the back of his head. There was something in his countenance not dissimilar to the facial contour of a grasshopper, and the suggestion was heightened by his persistent, rasping chirp.

“That’s what frets Meddy; she can’t abide the idee of huntin’ a human with sech special coursers ez money reward. She ‘lows it mought tempt a’ evil man or a’ ignorant one ter swear a miser’ble wretch’s life away. Let the law strengthen its own hands--that’s what Meddy say. Don’t kindle the sperit of Cain in every brother’s breast. Oh, Meddy is plumb comical whenst she fairly gits ter goin’, though it’s all on account of that thar man what war growed up in a tree.”

The dryadic suggestions of a dendroidal captivity flashed into Seymour’s mind with the phrase, and stimulated his curiosity as to some quaint rural perversion of the legend.

But it was grim fact that the old mountaineer detailed in answer to the question, as he sat on a log by the fire, while the sportsmen lay on the ground about it and idly listened.

“One day--‘t war ‘bout two year’ ago--thar war a valley-man up hyar a-huntin’ in the mountings with some other fellers, an’ toward sunset he war a-waitin’ at a stand on a deer-path up thar nigh Headlong Creek, hopin’ ter git a shot whenst the deer went down to drink. Waal, I reckon luck war ag’in’ him, fer he got nuthin’ but durned tired. So, ez he waited, he grounded his rifle, an’ leaned himself ag’in’ a great big tree ter rest his bones. And presently he jes happened ter turn his head, an’, folks! he seen a sight! Fer thar, right close ter his cheek, he looked into a skellington’s eye-sockets. Thar war a skellington’s grisly face peerin’ at him through a crack in the bark.”

The raconteur suddenly stopped short, while the group remained silent in expectancy. The camp-fire, with its elastic, leaping flames, had bepainted the darkening avenues of the russet woods with long, fibrous strokes of red and yellow, as with a brush scant of color. The autumnal air was dank, with subtle shivers. A precipice was not far distant on the western side, and there the darksome forest fell away, showing above the massive, purple mountains a section of sky in a heightened clarity of tint, a suave, saffron hue, with one horizontal bar of vivid vermilion that lured the eye. The old mountaineer gazed retrospectively at it as he resumed:

“Waal, sirs, that town-man had never consorted with sech ez skellingtons. He lit out straight! He made tracks! He never stopped till he reached Colbury, an’ thar he told his tale. Then the sheriff he tuk a hand in the game. Skellingtons, he said, didn’t grow on trees spontaneous, an’ he hed an official interes’ in human relics out o’ place. So he kem,--the tree is ‘twixt hyar an’ my house thar on the rise,--an’, folks! the tale war plain. Some man chased off ‘n the face of the yearth, hid out from the law,--that’s the way Meddy takes it,--he hed clomb the tree, an’ it bein’ holler, he drapped down inside it, thinkin’ o’ course he could git out the way he went in. But, no! It monght hev been deeper ‘n he calculated, or mo’ narrow, but he couldn’t make the rise. He died still strugglin’, fer his long, bony fingers war gripped in the wood--it’s rotted a deal sence then.”

“Who was the man?” asked Seymour.

“Nobody knows,--nobody keers ‘cept’ Meddy. She hev wep’ a bushel o’ tears about him. The cor’ner ‘lowed from the old-fashioned flint-lock rifle he hed with him that it mus’ hev happened nigh a hunderd years ago. Meddy she will git ter studyin’ on that of a winter night, an’ how the woman that keered fer him mus’ hev watched an’ waited fer him, an’ ‘lowed he war deceitful an’ de-sertin’, an’ mebbe held a gredge agin him, whilst he war dyin’ so pitiful an’ helpless, walled up in that tree. Then Meddy will tune up agin, an’ mighty nigh cry her eyes out. He warn’t even graced with a death-bed ter breathe his last; Meddy air partic’lar afflicted that he hed ter die afoot.” Old Kettison glanced about the circle, consciously facetious, his heavily grooved face distended in a mocking grin.

“A horrible fate!” exclaimed Seymour, with a half-shudder.

“Edzac’ly,” the old mountaineer assented easily.

“What’s her name--Meggy?” asked the journalist, with a mechanical aptitude for detail, no definite curiosity.

“Naw; Meddy--short fer Meddlesome. Her right name is Clementina Haddox; but I reckon every livin’ soul hev forgot’ it but me. She is jes Meddlesome by name, an’ meddlesome by natur’.”

He suddenly turned, gazing up the steep, wooded slope with an expectant mien, for the gentle rustling amidst the dense, red leaves of the sumac-bushes heralded an approach.

“That mus’ be Meddy now,” he commented, “with her salt-risin’ bread. She lowed she war goin’ ter fetch you-uns some whenst I tol’ her you-uns war lackin’.”

For the camp-hunt had already been signalized by divers disasters: the store of loaves in the wagon had been soaked by an inopportune shower; the young mountaineer who had combined the offices of guide and cook was the victim of an accidental discharge of a fowling-piece, receiving a load of bird-shot full in his face. Though his injury was slight, he had returned home, promising to supply his place by sending his brother, who had not yet arrived. Purcell’s boast that he could bake ash-cake proved a bluff, and although the party could and did broil bacon and even birds on the coals, they were reduced to the extremity of need for the staff of life.

Hence they were predisposed in the ministrant’s favor as she appeared, and were surprised to find that Meddlesome, instead of masterful and middle-aged, was a girl of eighteen, looking very shy and appealing as she paused on the verge of the flaring sumac copse, one hand lifted to a swaying bough, the other arm sustaining a basket. Even her coarse gown lent itself to pleasing effect, since its dull-brown hue composed well with the red and russet glow of the leaves about her, and its short waist, close sleeves, and scant skirt, reaching to the instep, the immemorial fashion of the hills, were less of a grotesque rusticity since there was prevalent elsewhere a vogue of quasi-Empire modes, of which the cut of her garb was reminiscent. A saffron kerchief about her throat had in its folds a necklace of over-cup acorns in three strands, and her hair, meekly parted on her forehead, was of a lustrous brown, and fell in heavy undulations on her shoulders. There was a delicate but distinct tracery of bine veins in her milky-white complexion, and she might have seemed eminently calculated for meddling disastrously with the peace of mind of the mountain youth were it not for the preoccupied expression of her eyes. Though large, brown and long-lashed, they were full of care and perplexity, and a frowning, disconcerted line between her eye-brows was so marked as almost to throw her face out of drawing. Troubled about many things, evidently, was Meddlesome. She could not even delegate the opening of a basket that her little brother had brought and placed beside the camp-fire.

“Don’t, Gran’dad,” she exclaimed suddenly, stepping alertly forward--“_don’t_ put that loaf in that thar bread-box; the box ‘pears ter be damp. Leave the loaf in the big basket till ter-morrer. It’ll eat shorter then, bein’ fraish-baked. They kin hev these biscuits fer supper,”--dropping on one knee and setting forth on the cloth, from the basket on her arm, some thick soggy-looking lumps of dough,--“I baked some dodgers, too--four, six, eight, ten,”--she was counting a dozen golden-brown cates of delectable aspect--“knowin’ they would hone fer cornmeal arter huntin’, an’ nuthin’ else nohow air fitten ter eat with feesh or aigs. Hev you-uns got any aigs!” She sprang up, and, standing on agile tiptoe, peered without ceremony into their wagon. Instantly she recoiled with a cry of horrified reproach. “Thar ‘s ants in yer short-sweetenin’! How could you-uns let sechez that happen!”

“Oh, surely not,” exclaimed Purcell, hastening to her side. But the fact could not be gainsaid; the neglected sugar was spoiled.

Meddlesome’s unwarranted intrusion into the arcana of their domestic concerns disclosed other shortcomings. “Why n’t ye keep the top on yer coffee-can? Don’t ye know the coffee will lose heart, settin’ open?” She repaired this oversight with a deft touch, and then proceeded: “We-uns ain’t got no short-sweetenin’ at our house, but I’ll send my leetle brother ter fetch some long-sweetenin’ fer yer coffee ter night. Hyar, Sol,”--addressing the small, limber, tow-headed, barefooted boy, a ludicrous miniature of a man in long, loose, brown-jeans trousers supported by a single suspender over an unbleached cotton shirt,--“run ter the house an’ fetch the sorghum-jug.”