Hapsburg Liebe

“ If a man was not providing for his family, he had a warning; if he did not immediately mend his ways, Daredevil Delaney gave him a whipping that he did not soon forget. Delaney caused men to pay their debts, support the preacher, and buy more corn-meal and bacon than yellow-corn whisky.
Of course, he had his enemies as well as his friends; and, of course, there had been committed grave crimes that had been put at his door—which was inevitable, and which often had placed him in jeopardy and made his position one scarcely to be envied.
"Mother," suddenly asked Buck, "are ye sick? ”

“ For one second Emmett stared in surprise. They sprang to the ground and faced each other. To run from one man was much against Delaney's liking, though the officer now had drawn a weapon. Delaney dove under with the lithe quickness of a panther; with his left hand he caught Emmett's gun-wrist, and with his right he wrenched the revolver free; then he struck the deputy a chest blow that staggered him, stepped backward, and threw the revolver over apple-trees and into a blackberry thicket. ”

“ He went to her and showed her the knife, He told her all that he had to tell about his new friend. Mary Newland turned a little pale at the name, even as Delaney had gone a little pale at hers. She took the handsome knife to the fire that smoldered in the wide-mouthed stone fireplace, and consigned it to the live coals; then she unwrapped the crimson-stained handkerchief from her son's injured finger and was about to throw it, too, into the fire, when Granny Hood called shrilly:
"Don't Mary! It's bad luck! It's bad luck to burn blood!" ”

“ She had the intense nature, and the corresponding temper of lightning-fire, of a people who had fought themselves well nigh to extinction; and she was still angry at Daredevil Delaney because she loved him above everything, except Buck, on earth. But she wouldn't admit it to herself. Never! You know how women are with their love affairs.
Contrary to Granny Hood's opinion of the matter, Mary Allison's "throwing him down" had not made Delaney the man he was. ”

“ It made him feel like a man. Buck walked, this still and hazy October afternoon, down the crooked and stony road that led down the crooked and stony creek, until he came to a small field of ripe corn. There he filched the biggest cornstalk he could find, and then he hastened over to the narrow stream, sat himself down beside it, opened his bone-handled barlow knife and began to whittle out the parts of a water-wheel. ”

“ HE WAS eleven years old, and he belonged to the aristocracy of Tennessee's mountains, on his mother's side of the house; his father had been a good-looking and good-natured, lazy North Carolina hillman to whom a hound dog was of as much value as a woman—which, after all, is saying very little against his regard for women. He lived, this boy, with his pretty widowed young mother in a small cabin near the head of the rather thickly settled valley that is called Little Jerusalem, of which "Daredevil" Delaney was king. ”

“ The lad walked down to the ripe cornfield, took another big cornstalk, went back to the cabin and borrowed a table-knife from the cupboard, and made a cornstalk fiddle. It was after sundown when Mary Newland returned.
The following morning, she washed and ironed Daredevil Delaney's handkerchief—and she did a job to be proud of—wrapped it in a page of an old story-paper, and sent Buck to the Delaney home with it.
"Go right to the house, and come right back," she instructed. "Don't stay, and don't talk to 'em." ”

“ Another moment, and the mountaineer had taken the manacles from his pocket and snapped them on Emmett's wrists!
"You're a man," he said, smiling and panting at the same time, "that I'd haf to kill, to whip. I don't want to kill ye, Emmett. I'd sudgest that ye go back to Sheriff Hanley and explain to him what a merry job he's agoin' to have a-takin' Hale Delaney to jail."
Without a word in reply, Emmett rose and walked down the road, mounted his horse, and rode toward Johnsville in the flat country. When he was out of sight, Delaney turned to Buck. ”

“ He gathered the limp little body up in his arms, with the law and its minions and all his enemies forgotten, and began to move rapidly, with the surefootedness of a panther, down the rugged steep and into danger. He well knew how that life he held against his breast was valued. ”

“ He's rich; he heired his daddy's farm and big frame house at the lower end o' this here valley, whar he lives with his maw. He owns timber, and cattle, sheeps, and hosses. He's as wild as a buck deer, and he fights like a wildcat what a mad dawg has bit, and he robs. The law don't seem to be able to git any proof on him. And yit, I did hear o' the county sheriff afore this'n a sayin' 'at Daredevil made about the best law they could have out here——"
At this point Mary Newland interrupted in a tremulous, white voice:
"That'll be enough about Hale Delaney, I reckon, Granny Hood. ”

“ And that had been from three to five o'clock on the afternoon of October fourth, the very time of Curtis Holden's assault and robbery!
Mary Newland withstood the most grilling cross-questioning; they couldn't entangle her. Counsel for the defense made his argument again, and this time it had strength with the jury. Delaney was acquitted; received a kindly lecture from the judge, and promised to remember it.
When he looked for Mary Newland that had been Mary Allison, she was gone back to her cabin in Little Jerusalem. He bought a marriage license and followed her. ”