Judith of the Cumberlands Part 1

Judith of the c.u.mberlands.

by Alice MacGowan.

DEDICATION

To my mountain friends, dwellers in lonely cabins, on winding horseback trails and steep, precarious roads; or in the tiny settlements that nestle in the high-hung inner valleys; lean brown hunters on remote paths in the green shadowed depths of the free forest, light-stepping, keen-eyed, humorous-lipped, hitting the point as aptly with an instance as with the old squirrel gun they carry; wielders of the axe by many a chip pile, where the swinging blade rests readily to answer query or offer advice; tanned, lithely moving lads following the plough, turning over the shoulder a countenance of dark beauty; grave, shy girls, pail in hand, at the milking-bars in dawn or dusk; young mothers in the doorway, looking out, babe on hip; big-eyed, bare-footed mountain children clinging hand in hand by the roadside, or cl.u.s.tered like startled little partridges in the shelter of the dooryard; knitters in the sun and grandams by the hearth; tellers and treasurers all of tales and legends couched in racy old Elizabethan English; I dedicate this--their book and mine.

FOREWORD

I have been so frequently asked how I, a woman, came by my intimate acquaintance with life in the more remote districts of the southern Appalachians, particularly in the matter of illicit distilling, that I think it not amiss to here set down a few words as to my sources of knowledge.

I have always lived in a small city in the heart of the c.u.mberlands, and a portion of each year was spent in the mountains themselves. The speech of Judith and her friends and kin has been familiar to me from childhood; their point of view, their customs and possessions as well known to me as my own. Then when I began to write, I was one summer at Roan Mountain, on the North Carolina-Tennessee line, probably less than two hundred miles from Chattanooga by the railway, and Gen. John T. Wilder, who had campaigned all through the fastnesses of that inaccessible region, suggested to me that I buy a mountain-bred saddle horse, and ride such a route as he would give me, bringing up, after about a thousand miles of it, at my home. To follow the itinerary that the old soldier marked out on the map for me was to leave railroads and modern civilisation as we know it, penetrate the wild heart of the region, and, depending on the wayside dwellers for hospitality and lodging from night to night, be forcibly thrust into an intimate comprehension of a phase of American life which is perhaps the most primitive our country affords.

I was more than eight weeks making this trip, carrying with me all necessary baggage on my capacious, cowgirl saddle with its long and numerous buckskin tie-strings. At first I shrank very much from riding up to a cabin--a young woman, alone, with garments and outfit that must challenge the attention and curiosity of these people--in the dusk of evening or in a heavy rain-storm, and asking in set terms for lodging.

But it took only a few days for me to find that here I was never to be stared at, wondered at, nor questioned; and that, proffering my request under such conditions, I was met by instant hospitality, and a grave, uninquiring courtesy unsurpa.s.sed and not always equalled in the best society, and I seemed to evoke a swift tenderness that was almost compa.s.sion.

During this journey I became acquainted with some features of mountain life which I might never have known otherwise. My best friends in the mountains in the neighbourhood of my own home had always been a little shy of discussing moonshine whiskey and moonshiners; but here I earned a dividend upon my misfortunes, being more than once taken for a revenue spy; and in the apologetic amenities of those who had misjudged me, which followed my explanations and proofs of innocence, I have been shown in a spirit of atonement, illicit still and "hideout." I have heard old Jephthah Turrentine make his protest against the government's att.i.tude toward the mountain man and his "blockaded still." I have foregathered with the revenuers in the settlements at the foot of the circling purple ranges, and been shown the specially made axes and hooks they carry with them for breaking up and destroying the simple appurtenances of the illicit manufacture. Knowing that Blatch Turrentine's still must have cost him three hundred dollars, I cannot wonder that a mountain man, a thrifty fellow like Blatch, should have lingered, even in great danger, over the project of carrying it with him.

These dwellers in the southern mountain region, the purest American strain left to us, hold the interest and appeal of a changing, vanishing type. The tide of enlightenment and commercial prosperity must presently sweep in and absorb them. And so I might hope that a faithful picture of the life and manners I have sought to represent in _Judith of the c.u.mberlands_ would be the better worth while.

A. Mac G.

Judith of the c.u.mberlands

Chapter I

Spring

"Won't you be jest dressed to kill an' cripple when you get that on!

Don't it set her off, Jeffy Ann?"

The village milliner fell back, hands on hips, thin lips screwed up, and regarded the possible purchaser through narrowed eyes of simulated ecstasy.

"I don't know," debated the brown beauty, surveying herself in a looking-gla.s.s by means of an awkwardly held hand-mirror. "'Pears to me this one's too little. Hit makes me look like I was sent for and couldn't come. But I do love red. I think the red on here is mightly sightly."

Instantly the woman of the shop had the hat off the dark young head and in her own hands.

"This is a powerful pretty red bow," she a.s.sented promptly. "I can take it out just as easy as not, and tack it onto that big hat you like. I believe you're right; and red certainly does go with yo' hair and eyes."

Again she gazed with languishing admiration at her customer.

And Judith Barrier was well worth it, tall, justly proportioned, deep-bosomed, long-limbed, with the fine hands and feet of the true mountaineer. The thick dusk hair rose up around her brow in a ma.s.sive, sculptural line; her dark eyes--the large, heavily fringed eyes of a dryad--glowed with the fires of youth, and with a certain lambent shining which was all their own; the stain on her cheeks was deep, answering to the ripe red of the full lips.

In point of fact Mrs. Rhody Staggart the milliner considered her a big, coa.r.s.e country girl, and thought that a pair of stout corsets well pulled in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, "Far over to one side, honey--jest the way they're a-wearin' them in New York this minute."

The buyer once more studied her mirror, and its dumb honesty told her that she was beautiful. Then she looked about for some human eyes to make the same communication.

"What's a-goin' on over yon at the Co't House?" she inquired with languid interest, looking across the open square.

"They's a political speakin'," explained the other. "Creed Bonbright he wants to be elected jestice of the peace and go back to the Turkey Tracks and set up a office. Fool boy! You know mighty well an' good they'll run him out o' thar--or kill him, one."

Although the girl had herself ridden down from Turkey Track Mountain that morning, and the old Bonbright farm adjoined her own, the news held no interest for her. She wished the gathering might have been something more to her purpose; but she solemnly paid for the hat, and with the cheap finery on her stately young head, which had been more appropriately crowned with a chaplet of vine leaves, moved to the door. She hoped that standing there, waiting for the boys to bring her horse, she might attract some attention by her recently acquired splendour.

She looked up at the Court House steps. The building was humbly in the Greek manner, as are so many of the public structures in the South.

Between its great white pillars, flaking paint and half-heartedly confessing their woodland genesis, stood a tall young man, bareheaded.

The doubtful sunlight of a March day glinted on his uncovered yellow hair. He was speaking rapidly in a fervid fashion that seemed beyond the occasion; in his blue eyes shone something of the fanatic's pa.s.sion; his bearing was that of a man who conceives himself to have a mission and a message.

Judith looked at him. She heard no word of what he was saying--but him she heard. She heard the high, vibrant voice, saw the fair hair on the upflung head, the rapt look in the blue eyes with their quick-expanding pupils. Suddenly her world turned over. In a smother of strange, uncomprehended emotions, she was gropingly glad she had the new hat--glad she had it on now, and that Mrs. Staggart herself had adjusted it. On blind impulse she edged around into plainer view, pushing freely in amongst the fringe of men and boys, an unheard-of thing for a well taught mountain girl to do, but Judith was for the moment absolutely unconscious of their humanity.

"You never go a-nigh my people," cried Bonbright in that clear thrilling tenor that is like a trumpet call, "you never go a-nigh them with the statute--with government--except when the United States marshal takes a posse up and raids the stills and brings down his prisoners. That's all the valley knows of the mountain folks. The law's never carried to anybody up there except the offenders and criminals. The Turkey Track neighbourhoods, Big and Little, have got a mighty bad name with you-all.

But you ought to understand that violence must come when every man is obliged to take the law into his own hands. I admit that it's an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth with us now--what else could it be? And yet we are as faithful to each other, as virtuous, and as G.o.d-fearing a race as those in the valley. I am a mountain man, born and bred in the Turkey Tracks; and I ask you to send me back to my neighbours with the law, that they may learn to be good citizens, as they are already good men and women."

Upon the word, there broke out at the farthest corner of the square an abrupt splatter of sound, oaths, cries, punctuated by the swift staccato of running feet. The ringing voice came to a sudden halt. Out of a little side street which descended from the mountain, a young fellow burst into view, running in long leaping bounds, his hands up. Behind him lumbered Dan Haley the United States marshal, a somewhat heavy-set man, puffing and panting, yelling, "Halt! halt! halt!" and finally turning loose a fusillade of shots aimed high over the fleeing lad's head. There was a drawing back and a scattering in every direction.

"Hey, Bonbright!" vociferated a man leaping up from the last step where he had been sitting, pointing to where the marshal's deputy followed behind herding five or six prisoners from the mountains, "Hey, Bonbright!

There's some of your const.i.tuency--some G.o.d-fearing Turkey-Trackers--now, but I reckon you won't own 'em."

"I will!" shouted Bonbright, whirling upon him, and one got suddenly the blue fire of his hawk-like eye with the slant brow above. "They _are_ my people, and the way they're treated is what I've been trying to talk to you-all about."

"Well, you better go and take them fellers some law right now," jeered his interlocutor. "Looks like to me they need it mighty bad."

"That's just what I'm about," answered Bonbright. "G.o.d knows they'll get no justice unless I do. That's my job," and without another word or a look behind him he made his way bareheaded through the group on the steps and down the street.

Meantime the pursued had turned desperately and dodged into the millinery store whence Judith Barrier had emerged a little earlier. Instantly there came out to the listeners the noise of falling articles and breaking gla.s.s, and the squeals and scufflings of the women. The red-faced marshal dived in after his quarry, and emerged a moment later holding him by one elbow, swearing angrily. Creed Bonbright came up at the instant, and Haley, needing some one to whom he could express himself, explained in voluble anger:

"The d.a.m.ned little shoat! Said if I'd let him walk a-loose he'd give me information. You can't trust none of them."

Bonbright laid a rea.s.suring touch on the fugitive's shoulder as Haley fumbled after the handcuffs.

"I ain't been into no stillin', Creed!" panted the squirming boy.

"Well, don't run then," admonished Bonbright. "You've got no call to.

I'll see that you get justice."

While he spoke there wheeled into the square, from a nearby waggon-yard, two young mountaineers on mules, one leading by the bridle-rein a sorrel horse with a side-saddle on it. At sight of the marshal and those with him, an almost imperceptible tremor went through the pair. There was a flicker of nostril, a rounding of eye, as their glance ran swiftly from one to another of Haley's prisoners. They were like wild game that winds the hunter.

"St! You Pony Card, is that them?" whispered Haley, sharply nudging the prisoner he held. "Turn him a-loose, Bonbright; I've got him handcuffed now."

The boy--he was not more than sixteen--choked, reddened, held down his head, studying the marshal's face anxiously from beneath lowered flax-coloured brows.

"Yes, them's Andy and Jeff Turrentine," Bonbright heard the husky, reluctant whisper. "Now cain't I go?"

The newcomers were beyond earshot, but the by-play was ominous to them.