A Knight of the Cumberland Part 4

"Get in, Buck."

Silently he got in and I pushed off--to the centre.

"This the deepest part, Buck?"

"I reckon so."

I dropped in the stone and the line reeled out some fifty feet and began to coil on the surface of the water.

"I guess that's on the bottom, isn't it, Buck?"

Buck looked genuinely distressed; but presently he brightened.

"Yes," he said, "ef hit ain't on a turtle's back."

Literally I threw up both hands and back we trailed--fishless.

"Reckon you won't need that two-hoss wagon," said Buck. "No, Buck, I think not." Buck looked at the Blight and gave himself the pleasure of his first chuckle. A big crackling, cheerful fire awaited us. Through the door I could see, outstretched on a bed in the next room, the limp figure of "pap" in alcoholic sleep. The old mother, big, kind-faced, explained--and there was a heaven of kindness and charity in her drawling voice.

"Dad didn' often git that a-way," she said; "but he'd been out a-huntin'

hawgs that mornin' and had met up with some teamsters and gone to a political speakin' and had tuk a dram or two of their mean whiskey, and not havin' nothin' on his stummick, hit had all gone to his head. No, 'pap' didn't git that a-way often, and he'd be all right jes' as soon as he slept it off a while." The old woman moved about with a cane and the sympathetic Blight merely looked a question at her.

"Yes, she'd fell down a year ago--and had sort o' hurt herself--didn't do nothin', though, 'cept break one hip," she added, in her kind, patient old voice. Did many people stop there? Oh, yes, sometimes fifteen at a time--they "never turned n.o.body away." And she had a big family, little Cindy and the two big girls and Buck and Mart--who was out somewhere--and the hired man, and yes--"Thar was another boy, but he was fitified," said one of the big sisters.

"I beg your pardon," said the wondering Blight, but she knew that phrase wouldn't do, so she added politely:

"What did you say?"

"Fitified--Tom has fits. He's in a asylum in the settlements."

"Tom come back once an' he was all right," said the old mother; "but he worried so much over them gals workin' so hard that it plum' throwed him off ag'in, and we had to send him back."

"Do you work pretty hard?" I asked presently. Then a story came that was full of unconscious pathos, because there was no hint of complaint--simply a plain statement of daily life. They got up before the men, in order to get breakfast ready; then they went with the men into the fields--those two girls--and worked like men. At dark they got supper ready, and after the men went to bed they worked on--washing dishes and clearing up the kitchen. They took it turn about getting supper, and sometimes, one said, she was "so plumb tuckered out that she'd drap on the bed and go to sleep ruther than eat her own supper."

No wonder poor Tom had to go back to the asylum. All the while the two girls stood by the fire looking, politely but minutely, at the two strange girls and their curious clothes and their boots, and the way they dressed their hair. Their hard life seemed to have hurt them none--for both were the pictures of health--whatever that phrase means.

After supper "pap" came in, perfectly sober, with a big ruddy face, giant frame, and twinkling gray eyes. He was the man who had risen to speak his faith in the Hon. Samuel Budd that day on the size of the Hon.

Samuel's ears. He, too, was unashamed and, as he explained his plight again, he did it with little apology.

"I seed ye at the speakin' to-day. That man Budd is a good man. He done somethin' fer a boy o' mine over at the Gap." Like little Buck, he, too, stopped short. "He's a good man an' I'm a-goin' to help him."

Yes, he repeated, quite irrelevantly, it was hunting hogs all day with nothing to eat and only mean whiskey to drink. Mart had not come in yet--he was "workin' out" now.

"He's the best worker in these mountains," said the old woman; "Mart works too hard."

The hired man appeared and joined us at the fire. Bedtime came, and I whispered jokingly to the Blight:

"I believe I'll ask that good-looking one to 'set up' with me." "Settin'

up" is what courting is called in the hills. The couple sit up in front of the fire after everybody else has gone to bed. The man puts his arm around the girl's neck and whispers; then she puts her arm around his neck and whispers--so that the rest may not hear. This I had related to the Blight, and now she withered me.

"You just do, now!"

I turned to the girl in question, whose name was Mollie. "Buck told me to ask you who Dave Branham was." Mollie wheeled, blushing and angry, but Buck had darted cackling out the door. "Oh," I said, and I changed the subject. "What time do you get up?"

"Oh, 'bout crack o' day." I was tired, and that was discouraging.

"Do you get up that early every morning?"

"No," was the quick answer; "a mornin' later."

A morning later, Mollie got up, each morning. The Blight laughed.

Pretty soon the two girls were taken into the next room, which was a long one, with one bed in one dark corner, one in the other, and a third bed in the middle. The feminine members of the family all followed them out on the porch and watched them brush their teeth, for they had never seen tooth-brushes before. They watched them prepare for bed--and I could hear much giggling and comment and many questions, all of which culminated, by and by, in a chorus of shrieking laughter. That climax, as I learned next morning, was over the Blight's hot-water bag. Never had their eyes rested on an article of more wonder and humor than that water bag.

By and by, the feminine members came back and we sat around the fire.

Still Mart did not appear, though somebody stepped into the kitchen, and from the warning glance that Mollie gave Buck when she left the room I guessed that the newcomer was her lover Dave. Pretty soon the old man yawned.

"Well, mammy, I reckon this stranger's about ready to lay down, if you've got a place fer him."

"Git a light, Buck," said the old woman. Buck got a light--a chimneyless, smoking oil-lamp--and led me into the same room where the Blight and my little sister were. Their heads were covered up, but the bed in the gloom of one corner was shaking with their smothered laughter. Buck pointed to the middle bed.

"I can get along without that light, Buck," I said, and I must have been rather haughty and abrupt, for a stifled shriek came from under the bedclothes in the corner and Buck disappeared swiftly. Preparations for bed are simple in the mountains--they were primitively simple for me that night. Being in knickerbockers, I merely took off my coat and shoes. Presently somebody else stepped into the room and the bed in the other corner creaked. Silence for a while. Then the door opened, and the head of the old woman was thrust in.

"Mart!" she said coaxingly; "git up thar now an' climb over inter bed with that ar stranger."

That was Mart at last, over in the corner. Mart turned, grumbled, and, to my great pleasure, swore that he wouldn't. The old woman waited a moment.

"Mart," she said again with gentle imperiousness, "git up thar now, I tell ye--you've got to sleep with that thar stranger."

She closed the door and with a snort Mart piled into bed with me. I gave him plenty of room and did not introduce myself. A little more dark silence--the shaking of the bed under the hilarity of those astonished, bethrilled, but thoroughly unfrightened young women in the dark corner on my left ceased, and again the door opened. This time it was the hired man, and I saw that the trouble was either that neither Mart nor Buck wanted to sleep with the hired man or that neither wanted to sleep with me. A long silence and then the boy Buck slipped in. The hired man delivered himself with the intonation somewhat of a circuit rider.

"I've been a-watchin' that star thar, through the winder. Sometimes. .h.i.t moves, then hit stands plum' still, an' ag'in hit gits to pitchin'." The hired man must have been touching up mean whiskey himself. Meanwhile, Mart seemed to be having spells of troubled slumber. He would snore gently, accentuate said snore with a sudden quiver of his body and then wake up with a climacteric snort and start that would shake the bed.

This was repeated several times, and I began to think of the unfortunate Tom who was "fitified." Mart seemed on the verge of a fit himself, and I waited apprehensively for each snorting climax to see if fits were a family failing. They were not. Peace overcame Mart and he slept deeply, but not I. The hired man began to show symptoms. He would roll and groan, dreaming of feuds, _quorum pars magna fuit_, it seemed, and of religious conversion, in which he feared he was not so great. Twice he said aloud:

"An' I tell you thar wouldn't a one of 'em have said a word if I'd been killed stone-dead." Twice he said it almost weepingly, and now and then he would groan appealingly:

"O Lawd, have mercy on my pore soul!"

Fortunately those two tired girls slept--I could hear their breathing--but sleep there was little for me. Once the troubled soul with the hoe got up and stumbled out to the water-bucket on the porch to soothe the fever or whatever it was that was burning him, and after that he was quiet. I awoke before day. The dim light at the window showed an empty bed--Buck and the hired man were gone. Mart was slipping out of the side of my bed, but the girls still slept on. I watched Mart, for I guessed I might now see what, perhaps, is the distinguishing trait of American civilization down to its bed-rock, as you find it through the West and in the Southern hills--a chivalrous respect for women. Mart thought I was asleep. Over in the corner were two creatures the like of which I supposed he had never seen and would not see, since he came in too late the night before, and was going away too early now--and two angels straight from heaven could not have stirred my curiosity any more than they already must have stirred his. But not once did Mart turn his eyes, much less his face, toward the corner where they were--not once, for I watched him closely. And when he went out he sent his little sister back for his shoes, which the night-walking hired man had accidentally kicked toward the foot of the strangers' bed. In a minute I was out after him, but he was gone. Behind me the two girls opened their eyes on a room that was empty save for them. Then the Blight spoke (this I was told later).

"Dear," she said, "have our room-mates gone?"

Breakfast at dawn. The mountain girls were ready to go to work. All looked sorry to have us leave. They asked us to come back again, and they meant it. We said we would like to come back--and we meant it--to see them--the kind old mother, the pioneer-like old man, st.u.r.dy little Buck, shy little Cindy, the elusive, hard-working, unconsciously shivery Mart, and the two big sisters. As we started back up the river the sisters started for the fields, and I thought of their stricken brother in the settlements, who must have been much like Mart.

Back up the Big Black Mountain we toiled, and late in the afternoon we were on the State line that runs the crest of the Big Black. Right on top and bisected by that State line sat a dingy little shack, and there, with one leg thrown over the pommel of his saddle, sat Marston, drinking water from a gourd.

"I was coming over to meet you," he said, smiling at the Blight, who, greatly pleased, smiled back at him. The shack was a "blind Tiger"

where whiskey could be sold to Kentuckians on the Virginia side and to Virginians on the Kentucky side. Hanging around were the slouching figures of several moonshiners and the villainous fellow who ran it.