Judith of the Cumberlands Part 4

"Well--I--I might," faltered the fleshy one, sidling toward the table and getting himself into a seat. Without further word his father pa.s.sed the great dish of fried potatoes, then the platter of bacon. Judith brought hot coffee and corn pone for him. She did not sit down with the men, having quite enough to do to get the meal served.

Unheedingly she heard the matter discussed at the table; only when Creed Bonbright's name came up was she moved to listen and put in her word.

Something in her manner of describing the a.s.sistance Bonbright offered seemed to go against Blatch's grain.

"Got to look out for these here folks that's so free with their offers o'

he'p," he grunted. "Man'll slap ye on the back and tell ye what a fine feller ye air whilst he's feelin' for your pocket-book--that's town ways."

The girl was like one hearkening for a finer voice amid all this distracting noise; she could hear neither. She made feverish haste to clear away and wash her dishes, that she might creep to her own room under the eaves. Through her open cas.e.m.e.nt came up to her the sounds of the April night: a heightened chorus of little frogs in a rain-fed branch; nearer in the dooryard a half-dozen tree-toads trilling plaintively as many different minors; with these, scents of growing, sharpened and sweetened by the dark. And all night the cedar tree which stood close to the porch edge below moved in the wind of spring, and, chafing against the shingles, spoke through the miniature music in its deep, m.u.f.fled legato, a soft baritone note like a man's voice--a lover's voice--calling to her beneath her window.

It roused her from fitful slumbers to happy waking, when she lay and stared into the dark, and painted for herself on its sombre background Creed Bonbright's figure, the yellow uncovered head close to her knee as he stood and talked at the foot of the mountain trail. And the voice of the tree in the eager spring airs said to her waiting heart--whispered it softly, shouted and tossed it abroad so that all might have heard it had they been awake and known the shibboleth, murmured it in tones of tenderness that penetrated her with bliss--that Creed was coming--coming--coming to her, through the April woods.

Chapter III

Suitors

April was in the mountains. All the vast timbered slopes and tablelands of the c.u.mberlands were one golden dapple, as yet differentiated by darker greens and heavier shadows only where some group of pine or cedar stood. April in the c.u.mberlands is the May or early June of New England.

Here March has the days of shine and shower; while to February belongs the gusty turbulence usually attributed to March. Now sounded the calls of the first whippoorwills in the dusk of evening; now the first mocking-bird sang long before day, very sweetly and softly, and again before moonrise; hours of sun he filled with bolder rejoicings, condescending in his more antic humour to mimic the hens that began to cackle around the barn. Every thicket by the water-courses blushed with azaleas; all the banks were gay with wild violets.

Throughout March's changeful emotional season, night after night in those restless vehement impa.s.sioned airs, the cedar tree talked ardently to Judith. Through April's softer nights she wakened often to listen to it.

It went fondly over its first a.s.surances. And the time of Creed Bonbright's advent was near at hand now. Thought of it made light her step as she went about her work.

"Don't you never marry a lazy man, Jude."

The wife of Jim Cal Turrentine halted on the doorstep, a coa.r.s.e white cup containing the coffee she had come to borrow poised in her hand as she turned to harangue the girl in the kitchen.

"I ain't aimin' to wed no man. Huh, I say marry! I'm not studyin' about marryin'," promptly responded Judith in the mountain girl's unfailing formula; but she coloured high, and bent, pot-hooks in hand, to the great hearth to shift the clumsy Dutch oven that contained her bread.

"That's what gals allers says," commented Iley Turrentine discontentedly.

"Huldy's forever singin' that tune. But let a good-lookin' feller come in reach and I 'low any of you will change the note. Huldy's took her foot in her hand and put out--left me with the whole wash to do, and Jim Cal in the bed declarin' he's got a misery in his back. Don't you never wed a lazy man."

"Whar's Huldy gone?" inquired Judith, sauntering to the door and looking out on the glad beauty of the April morning with fond brooding eyes. The grotesque bow-legged pot-hooks dangled idly in her fingers.

"Over to Nancy Cyard's to git her littlest spinnin' wheel--so she _said_.

I took notice that she had a need for that wheel as soon as ever she hearn tell that Creed Bonbright was up from Hepzibah stayin' at the Cyards's."

Had not Iley been so engrossed with her own grievances, the sudden heat of the look Judith turned upon her must have enlightened her.

"Huldy knowed him right well when she was waitin' on table at Miz.

Huffaker's boarding-house down at Hepzibah," the woman went on. "I ain't got no use for these here fellers that's around tendin' to the whole world's business--they' own chil'en is mighty apt to go hongry. But thar, what does a gal think of that by the side o' curly hair and soft-spoken ways?"

For Judith Barrier at once all the light was gone out of the spring morning. The bird in the Rose of Sharon bush that she had taken for a thrush--why, the thing cawed like a crow. She could have struck her visitor. And then, with an uncertain impulse of grat.i.tude, she was glad to be told anything about Creed, to be informed that others knew his hair was yellow and curly.

"Gone?" sounded old Jephthah's deep tones from within, as Mrs. Jim Cal made her reluctant way back to a sick husband and a house full of work and babies. "Lord, to think of a woman havin' the keen tongue that Iley's got, and her husband keepin' fat on it!"

"Uncle Jep," inquired Judith abruptly, "did you know Creed Bonbright was at Nancy Card's--stayin' there, I mean?"

"No," returned the old man, seeing in this a chance to call at the cabin, where, beneath the reception that might have been offered an interloper, even a duller wit than his might have divined a secret cordial welcome.

"I reckon I better find time to step over that way an' ax is there anything I can do to he'p 'em out."

"I wish 't you would," a.s.sented Judith so heartily that he turned and regarded her with surprise. "An' ef you see Huldy over yon tell her she's needed at home. Jim Cal's sick, and Iley can't no-way git along without her."

"I reckon James Calhoun Turrentine ain't got nothin' worse 'n the old complaint that sends a feller fishin' when the days gits warm," opined Jim Cal's father. "I named that boy after the finest man that ever walked G.o.d's green earth--an' then the fool had to go and git fat on me! To think of me with a _fat_ son! I allers did hold that a fat woman was bad enough, but a fat man ort p'intedly to be led out an' killed."

"Jude, whar's my knife," came the call from the window in a masculine voice. "Pitch it out here, can't you?"

Judith took the pocket-knife from the mantel, and going to the window tossed it to her cousin Wade Turrentine, who was shaping an axe helve at the chip pile.

"Do you know whar Huldy's gone?" she inquired, setting her elbows on the sill and staring down at the young fellow accusingly.

"Nope--an' don't care neither," said Wade, contentedly returning to his whittling. He was expecting to marry Huldah Spiller, Iley's younger sister, within a few months, and the reply was thus conventional.

"Well, you'd better care," urged Judith. "You better make her stay home and behave herself. She's gone over to Nancy Card's taggin' after Creed Bonbright. I wouldn't stand it ef I was you."

"I ain't standin'--I'm settin'," retorted Wade with rather feeble wit; but the girl noted with satisfaction the quick, fierce spark of anger that leaped to life in his clear hazel eyes, the instant stiffening of his relaxed figure. Like a child playing with fire, she was ready to set alight any materials that came within reach of her reckless fingers, so only that she fancied her own ends might be served. Now she went uneasily back to the hearthstone. Her uncle, noting that she appeared engrossed in her baking, gave a surrept.i.tious glance into the small ancient mirror standing on the high mantel, made a half-furtive exchange of coats, and prepared to depart.

Up at the crib Blatch Turrentine was loading corn, and Jim Cal came creeping across from his own cabin whence Iley had ejected him. He stood for a while, humped, hands in pockets, watching the other's strong body spring lithely to its task. Finally he began in his plaintive, ineffectual voice.

"Blatch, I take notice that you seem to be settin' up to Jude. Do ye think hit's wise?"

The other grunted over a particularly heavy sack, swung it to the waggon bed, straightened himself suddenly, and faced his questioner with a look of dark anger.

"I'd like to see the feller that can git her away from me!" he growled.

"I wasn't a-meanin' that," said Jim Cal, patiently but uneasily shifting from the right foot to the left. "I'll admit--an' I reckon everybody on the place will say the same--that she's always give you mo' reason than another to believe she'd have ye. Not but what that's Jude's way, an'

she's hilt out sech hopes to a-many. What pesters me is how you two would make out, once you was wed. Jude's mighty pretty, but then again she's got a tongue."

"Her farm hain't," chuckled Blatch, pulling a sack into place; "and I 'low Jude wouldn't have after her and me had been wed a short while."

"I don't know, Blatch," maintained the fleshy one, timid yet persisting.

"You're a great somebody for havin' yo' own way, an' Jude's mighty high sperrity--why, you two would sh.o.r.ely fuss."

"Not more than once, we wouldn't," returned Blatch with a meaning laugh.

"The way to do with a woman like Jude is to give her a civil beatin' to start out with and show her who's boss--wouldn't be no trouble after that. Jude Barrier has got a good farm. She's the best worker of any gal that I know, and I aim for to have her--an' this farm."

Within the house now Judith, her cheeks glowing crimson as she bent above the heaped coals, was going with waxing resentment over the catalogue of Huldah Spiller's personal characteristics. Her hair, huh! she was mighty particular to call it "aurbu'n," but a body might as well say red when they were namin' it, because red was what it was. If a man admired a turkey egg he would be likely to see beauty in Huldah's complexion--some folks might wear a sunbonnet to bed, and freckle they would! A vision of the laughing black eyes and white flashing teeth that went with Huldah Spiller's red ringlets and freckles, and made her little hatchet face brilliant when she smiled or laughed, suddenly put Judith on foot and running to the door.

"Uncle Jep," she called after the tall receding form, "_Oh_, Uncle Jep!"

He turned muttering, "I hope to goodness Jude ain't goin' to git the hollerin' habit. There's Iley never lets Jim Cal git away from the house without hollerin' after him as much as three times, and the thing he'd like least to have knowed abroad is the thing she takes up with for the last holler."

"Uncle Jep," came the clear hail from the doorway, "don't you fail to find Huldy and send her straight home. Tell her Iley's nigh about give out, and Jim Cal's down sick in the bed--hear me?"

He nodded and turned disgustedly. What earthly difference did it make about Jim Cal and Huldah and Iley? Why should Judith suddenly care? And then, being a philosopher and in his own manner an amateur of life, he set to work to a.n.a.lyze her motives, and guessed obliquely at them.