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                        THE CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS

                         BY CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK

       AUTHOR OF THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS, THE BATTLE CRY, ETC.


    ILLUSTRATIONS BY
    G. W. GAGE

    NEW YORK
    GROSSET & DUNLAP
    PUBLISHERS

    COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY
    W. J. WATT & COMPANY

    _Published May_


       *       *       *       *       *


              _OTHER BOOKS BY_

            CHARLES NEVILLE BUCK


    THE KEY TO YESTERDAY
    THE LIGHTED MATCH
    THE PORTAL OF DREAMS
    THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS
    THE BATTLE CRY




[Illustration: "Newty," she said softly, "why don't you shake the dirt
of this place offen your feet?"]




THE CODE OF THE MOUNTAINS




CHAPTER I


This morning the boy from the forks of Troublesome Creek had back his
name once more. It was not a distinguished name, nor one to be flaunted
in pride of race or achievement. On the contrary, it was a synonym for
violent law-breaking and in the homely parlance of the Cumberland
ridges, where certain infractions are condoned, it stood for "pizen
meanness." Generations of Spooners before him had taken up the surname
and carried it like runners in a relay race--often into evil ways. Many
had laid down their lives and name with abruptness and violence.

When the pioneers first set their feet into the Wilderness trail out of
Virginia, some left because the vague hinterland west of the ridges
placed them "beyond the law's pursuing."

Tradition said that of the latter class were the Spooners, but Newt
Spooner had no occasion to probe the remote past for a record of
turpitude. It lay before him inscribed in a round clerical hand on the
ledger which the warden of the Frankfort Penitentiary was just closing.
Though the Governor's clemency had expunged the red charge of murder
set against his name at the tender age of eighteen, there was another
record which the Governor could not erase. A sunken grave bore testimony
in a steep mountainside burial-ground back in "Bloody Breathitt," where
dead weed stalks rattled and tangled ropes of fox-grapes bore their
fruit in due season.

However, even the name of Newt Spooner is a better thing than the Number
813, which for two years had been his designation within those gray and
fortressed walls along whose tops sentry-boxes punctuated the angles.

This morning he wore a suit of black clothes, the gift of the
commonwealth, and his eyes were fixed rather avidly on a five-dollar
note which the warden held tightly between his thumb and forefinger.
Newt knew that the bill, too, was to be his. Yet the warden seemed
needlessly deliberate in making the presentation. That functionary
intended first to have something to say; something meant in all
kindliness, but as Newt waited, shifting his bulk uneasily from foot to
foot, his narrowed eyes traveled with restlessness, and his thin lips
clamped themselves into a line indicative of neither gratitude nor
penitence. The convict's thoughts for two years had been circling with
uncomplicated directness about one focus. Newt Spooner had a fixed idea.

The office of the warden was not a cheery place. Its walls and desk and
key-racks spoke suggestively of the business administered there. The
warden tilted back in his swivel chair, and gazed at the forgiven, but
unforgiving prisoner.

"Spooner," he began in that tone which all homilies have in common;
"Spooner, you have been luckier than you had any reason to expect. It's
up to you to see that I don't get you back here again."

He gazed sternly at the boy, for he was still a boy, despite the chalky
and aged pallor of his face, despite the tight-clenched line of the thin
lips, despite the stooping and emaciated shoulders. The Kentucky
mountaineer withers into quick decay between prison walls, and, unless
appearances were deceitful, this one was already being beckoned to by
the specter of tuberculosis.

"You have been pardoned and restored to all civil rights by the
Governor," went on the official. "Your youth and ill health appealed to
some ladies who went through the prison. You are the youngest homicide
we have here. They interceded because you were only an ignorant kid when
you were drawn into this murder conspiracy."

Newt's eyes blazed evilly at the words, but he only clamped his mouth
tighter. He would not have called it a murder conspiracy. To him it was
merely "killin' a feller that needed killin'." "Since," continued the
warden quietly, "you were full of white liquor, and since you had never
had a chance to know much anyhow, those ladies got busy, and you have
another chance. You ought to feel very grateful to them. It's up to you
to prove that the experiment was worth the risk it involves--the risk
of turning an assassin loose on society."

The boy from Troublesome said nothing. From his thin chest came a deep,
racking cough. He spat on the floor, and wondered how long this man
would hold back the five-dollar bill and prolong the interview.

"Well?" The warden's voice was impatient. "Don't you hear me talking to
you? Haven't you got any sense of decent gratitude?"

A fiercely baleful wrath shot instinctively through Newt's gray
hawk-like eyes and smoldered in their deep sockets, but there still was
need to leash his anger--and conceal his purpose.

"I'm obleeged ter