In Happy Valley Part 12

Night and day, and through wind and storm, she had travelled the hills, healing the sick and laying out and helping to bury the dead. Apparently there was not a man, woman, or child in Happy Valley who did not love her or have some reason to be grateful, and when in the open-air meeting-house Parson Small told of her work and prayed that her life be spared, there were fervent "Amens," or tears and sobs, from all. Doctor Jim soon found himself getting deeply interested in the people, and when he contrasted the lives of those whom the influence of the Mission school had not yet reached with the folks in Happy Valley he began to realize the amazing good that St. Hilda was doing in the hills. What a place he was earning for himself he was yet to learn, but through some mystification an inkling came. To be sure, everybody spoke to him as though he were a fixture in the land. He could pa.s.s no door that somebody did not ask him to come in and rest a spell, or stay all night. He never went by the mill that Aunt Jane did not have a gla.s.s of b.u.t.termilk for him and Uncle Jerry did not try to entice him in for a talk. Several times the little judge of Happy Valley had ridden down to ask after Juno and to talk with him.

Pleasant Trouble waved his crutch from a hillside and shouted himself at Doctor Jim's disposal for any purpose whatever. But one sunset he had stopped at Lum Chapman's blacksmith-shop just as a big, black-haired fellow, with a pistol buckled around him, was reeling away. The men greeted him rather solemnly, and he felt that they wanted to say something to him, but no one spoke. He saw Jay Dawn nod curtly to Pleasant Trouble, who got briskly up and walked up the road with him until they were in sight of Juno's home. For three days thereafter Pleasant was waiting for him at the shop and walked the same s.p.a.ce with him. The next day Jay Dawn spoke with some embarra.s.sment to him:

"Have you got a gun?"

"No." Jay handed forth one.

"Oh, no!" said Doctor Jim.

"Go on!" said Jay shortly; "I got another un."

"But why do I need a gun?" Jay was distinctly embarra.s.sed.

"Well," he drawled, "thar's some purty bad fellers 'bout hyeh, an' when they gits drunk they might do somethin'. Now that Jerry Lipps you seed hyeh t'other day a-staggerin' off drunk--he's bad. An' you do a heap o'

travellin' alone. This ain't fer you to kill n.o.body but jus' kind o' to pertect yerself."

"All right," laughed Doctor Jim. "I couldn't hit a barn--" but to humor Jay he took the weapon, and this time Pleasant Trouble did not walk home with him.

Later he mentioned the matter to St. Hilda, who looked very grave.

"Yes, Jerry Lipps is a bad man. He's just out of the penitentiary.

Pleasant walked home with you to protect you from him. They won't let him do anything to you openly. And Jay gave you that gun in case he should attack you when n.o.body was around."

"But what has the fellow got against me?" The teacher hesitated.

"Well, Jerry used to be in love with Juno, but she would never have anything to do with him and he never would let her have anything to do with anybody else. He shot one boy, and shot at another, and he has always sworn that he would kill the man she married."

"Nonsense!" he said, but going home that night Doctor Jim carried the gun where he could get at it quickly.

"My G.o.d!" he muttered with grim humor; "no wonder Juno didn't want me to come."

It was only a few days later that Doctor Jim came out of Lum Chapman's house and paused in the path looking up Wolf Run. Jerry Lipps's sister lived half a mile above and he had just heard that her little daughter was down with the fever. Jerry might be staying with the sister, but Doctor Jim's duty was now up there and, in spite of the warnings given him, he did not hesitate. The woman stared when he told who he was and why he had come, but she nodded and pointed to the bed where the child lay. He put his pistol on the bed, thrust a thermometer into the little girl's mouth and began taking her pulse. A hand swept the pistol from the bed and, when he turned around, about all he could think was: "How extraordinary!"

Jerry, red with rage and drink, was at the kitchen door fumbling at the b.u.t.t of his pistol, while his sister had Doctor Jim's gun levelled at her brother's heart.

"You can't tech him," she said coolly, "an' if you pull that gun out an inch furder I'll kill ye as sh.o.r.e as thar's a G.o.d in heaven." And at that moment the door opened and Pleasant Trouble swung in on his crutch and grinned. Doctor Jim then heard the tongue-lashing of his life. The woman's volubility was like a mill-race, and her command of vitriolic epithets was beyond his ken. She recited what Juno had done, Doctor Jim was doing, the things Jerry had done and left undone, and wound up:

"You never was wuth Juno's little finger, an' you ain't wuth _his_ little finger-nail now. Take his gun, Pleas. Take him to the State line, an' don't you boys let him come back agin until he's stopped drinkin', got a suit o'

clothes, an' a job."

"Why, Mandy," said Pleasant, "hit's kind o' funny, but Lum an' Jay an' me fixed hit up about an hour ago that we aimed to do that very thing. I seed Doc a-comin' up hyeh, an' was afeard I mought be too late: but if I'd 'a'

knowed you was hyeh I wouldn't 'a' worried."

Again Doctor Jim was thinking, "How extraordinary!" but this time how extraordinary it was that the man really meant to shoot him. Somehow he began to understand.

Still grinning, Pleasant Trouble had swung across the room, whipped Jerry's pistol from the holster, and with it motioned the owner toward the door. Then Doctor Jim rose. "Hold on!" he said, and he took the pistol from the woman's hands, strode straight up to Jerry and smiled.

Now, from the top of Virginia down through seven Southern States to Georgia there are some three million mountaineers, and it is doubtful if among them all any other three pairs of ears ever heard such words as Professor James Blagden of New England spoke now:

"Jerry, I don't blame you for having loved Juno, or for loving her now.

I wouldn't blame anybody. I even understand now why you wanted to kill me, but that would have been--silly. Give him back his gun, Pleasant,"

he added, still smiling, "and give this one back to Jay." He reached in his pocket, pulled forth two cigars and handed one to each. "Now you two sit down and smoke, and in a moment I'll go along with you, and we'll help Jerry get a job." And thereupon Doctor Jim turned around to his little patient. Dazed and a bit hypnotized, Jerry took the cigar and thrust his pistol into his holster.

"I'll be gittin' along," he said sullenly, and made for the door. Pleasant followed him. At the road Jerry turned one way and Pleasant the other.

"You heered whut Mandy and me said," drawled Pleasant. "If you poke yore nose over the line 'bout three of us will shoot you on sight. We'd do it fer Juno, an' if she ain't alive we'll do it fer Doctor Jim."

"I was a-goin' over thar anyways," said Jerry, "an' I'll come back when I please. You one-legged limb o' Satan--you go plum'"--Pleasant's eyes began to glitter--"back to him."

Pleasant laughed, and as they walked their separate ways the same question was in the minds of both:

"Now, whut the h.e.l.l did he mean by 'silly'?"

IV

Only the next morning a happy day dawned. Old King Camp came home with his sons--two stalwart boys and a giant father. Doctor Jim looked long at old King's hair, which was bushy and jet-black. He stood it as long as he could and then he asked:

"Why do people on the other side of the mountain call you _Red_ King Camp?"

he asked.

"They don't--not more'n once," was the grim answer. "I'm _Black_ King Camp.

Red's my cousin, but I don't claim him."

One load was off Doctor Jim's heart. His father-in-law was like his name in many ways, and Doctor Jim liked him straightway and Black King liked Doctor Jim. Old King shook his head.

"I don't see why Juno didn't bring you down here long ago," he said, and Doctor Jim did not try to explain--he couldn't. It must have been fear of Jerry--and he believed that Jerry, too, was now out of the way.

About noon Juno came back for the first time from another world. She did not open her eyes, but she heard voices and knew what they were saying.

Her mother was talking in the next room to somebody whom she called Jim.

Who could Jim be? And then she heard the man's voice. Her eyes opened slowly on the nurse, her lips moved, but before she could frame the question her heart throbbed so that she went back into unconsciousness again. But the nurse saw and told, and when Juno came back again she saw her husband and smiled without surprise or fright.

"I dreamed you were here," she whispered, "and I'm dreaming right now that you are here. Why, I see you." Gently he took her face in his hands, and when she felt his touch she looked at him wildly and the tears sprang.

From that day on she gained fast, and from the nurse, her mother, and the neighbors she soon knew the story of Doctor Jim.

"So you thought Red King was my father," she said, "and that he was in the penitentiary?" Doctor Jim nodded shamefacedly.

"Well, even that wouldn't have been so bad--not down here. And maybe you thought I didn't want you to come on account of Jerry Lipps." Again Doctor Jim nodded admission, and Juno laughed.

"I never thought of that, and if I had," she added proudly and scornfully, "I never would have been afraid--for _you_."

"Then why didn't you want me to come?"

"I didn't know _you_--didn't know the big, _big_ man you are. Now I'm shamed--and happy."

One morning, three weeks later, Jay Dawn and Lum Chapman brought up a litter that Lum had made, and they two and Black King and Doctor Jim made ready to carry Juno down the mountain. Jerry Lipps was pa.s.sing in the road when they bore her out the gate, and he started to sidle by with averted eyes. Doctor Jim halted.

"Here, Jerry!" he called. "You take my place." And Jerry, red as an oak leaf in autumn, stepped up to the litter, and up at her old lover Juno smiled.

"Doc," said Jerry, "I got a job."