Judith of the Cumberlands Part 8

She ran and knelt down beside them.

He had said that his favourite colour was blue--but there are no blue roses. She did not follow it far enough to guess that the man who was content with the colour of the sky might not get his gaze down close enough to earth to care for roses. She bent above them gloating on their fierce, triumphant splendour. Was there ever such a colour? But the stems were dreadfully short. A sudden purpose grew in her mind. With hasty, tremulous fingers she gathered an ap.r.o.nful of the blossoms. Once more she unlocked the front door, hurried back to that bed which she had so lovingly spread, and on its white coverlet began arranging a great, glowing wreath, fashioned by setting a circle of red roses petal to petal.

As she worked Cliantha Lusk's ballad came into her head, and she sang it under her breath.

"'And they grew and they grew to the old church top Till they couldn't grow any higher, And there they twined in a true lover's knot, The red rose and the briar.'

"No--that ain't it--

"'And there they twined in a true lover's knot, For all true lovers to admire.'"

True lovers--she crooned the word over and over. It was sweet to say it.

She thrilled through all her strong young body with the delight of what she was doing.

"He'll wonder who put 'em there," she whispered to herself. "Ef nothin'

else don't take his eye, these here is sh.o.r.e to."

Chapter VI

The Play-Party

Long lanes of light crossed the gra.s.s from window and door of the Turrentine house; Judith's play-party was in full swing. They were dancing or playing in the big front room which was lit only by the rich broken shimmer and shine from a fire of pine sticks in the cavernous black chimney. Though it was early July the evening, in those alt.i.tudes, had its own chill, and the heat from this was not unpleasant, while its illumination became necessary, for all the lamps and candles available were in use out where the tables were spread.

Old Jephthah held state in his own quarters, a detached log cabin standing about thirty feet from the main structure, and once used probably to house the loom or for some such extra domestic purpose. Here too a fire smoldered on the hearthstone, for the head of the Turrentine clan was tormented by rheumatism, that plague of otherwise healthy primitive man. He lounged now on the doorstep, smoking, ready to intercept and entertain any of the older men who might come with their women folk. Occasionally somebody rode up, or came tramping down the trail or through the woods--a belated merrymaker hurrying in to ask who had arrived and who was expected.

To the father's intense disgust Jim Cal had elected to sit with the elders that night, and obstinately held his place before the hearthstone in the cabin room. Jephthah Turrentine's sons were none of them particularly satisfactory to their progenitor. A man of brains, a creature to whom an argument was ever more than the mere material thing argued about, these male offspring, who took their traits naturally after the spindle side, vexed him with resemblance to their handsome, high-tempered, brainless mother. But Jim Cal was worse than a bore to his father; the old fellow regarded a son who weighed above two hundred pounds as a disgrace. And to-night the fact that the door of his room commanded a sidelong view of the tables which were being spread, and about which Iley circled and scolded, furnished so fair a reason for James Calhoun's selection of it as an anchorage that his father was the more offended.

"You thar, Unc' Jep?" sounded Blatchley Turrentine's careless voice from the dark.

"I make out to be," returned his uncle lazily.

Blatchley came into the circle of dim light about the door, Andy and Jeff at his shoulder. Wade followed a moment later.

"Why ain't you-all boys down thar whar the gals is at, playin'?" inquired Jim Cal fretfully. "Looks like to me ef I was a young feller an' not wedded I wouldn't hang around whar the old men was."

"Is Creed Bonbright comin' over here to-night?" inquired Andy abruptly, in obedience apparently to a nudge from Blatch.

"I reckon he is," observed the old man dispa.s.sionately. "Jude has purty well bidden the whole top of the mountain."

"Is Pone Cyard comin'?" put in Jeff. The twins usually spoke alternately, the sum of their conversation counting thus for one.

"That I can't say," returned the old man with mildly ironic emphasis.

"Mebbe him and the chaps and the lame rooster--_and_ Nancy--will come along at the tail of the procession."

"Well," persisted Andy, breaking a somewhat lengthened silence in which all the newcomers stood, and through which their breathing could be distinctly heard, "well I think Creed Bonbright has got the impudence! He come to the jail, whar me and Jeff was at, an' he had some talk with us, an' I let him know my mind. He stood in with that marshal--I know it--and so does Jeff. Pone Cyard got out quicker becaze Bonbright tipped the marshal the wink; but I don't hold with him nor his doin's."

The parent of the twins regarded them both with sardonic black eyes half shut. "_You_ don't? And who-all might you be, young fellers?" he asked.

"This here Bonbright man has come up on Turkey Track to give us a show at law. If they's persons engaged in unlawful practices on this here mountain top, mebbe he'll knock up against 'em. Them that keeps the law and lives decent has no reason to fear the law. Ain't that what you say, Blatch?" turning suddenly to his nephew.

The big swart mountaineer drew up his shoulders with a sort of shrug.

"Ef you stand in with Bonbright, Unc' Jep," he said, bluntly, "we might as well all go down to Hepzibah and give ourselves up. You've done rented me the land, and yo' boys is in the still with me--air ye a-goin' to stand from under, and have the marshal forever keepin' us on the jump?"

Old Jephthah looked wordless contempt at the nephew who knew little enough to impute such a course to him.

"That's what I say," put in Jim Cal's thin, querulous tones from the back of the room--the voice of a fat man in trouble; can anyone say why the sorrows of the obese are always comic to the rest of the world? "A body cain't sleep nights for thinkin' what may chance."

"Oh,--air you thar, podner?" inquired Blatch, with a sort of ferocious banter in his tone which he frequently used toward his fleshy a.s.sociate.

"I thort ye was down in the bed sick."

"I was," said Jim Cal sulkily; "but Iley she said--Iley 'lowed----"

Blatch burst into a great horse laugh, which the others joined.

"I know'd in reason ye'd be down when they came any trouble at the still," he commented. "Hit always affects yo' health thataway; but I didn't know Iley had seed reason to dig ye out. What you goin' to do about Bonbright, Unc' Jep--stand in with him?"

"Well--you _air_ a fool," observed the old man meditatively. "Who named standin' in with Bonbright, or standin' out agin' him? When I rented you my farm for five year I had no thought of yo' starting up that pesky ol'

still on it. But I never was knowed to rue a trade. My daddy taught me when I made a bad bargain to freeze the tighter to it, and I've no mind to do other."

"They'd been a still thar," said Blatch defensively.

The old man nodded.

"Oh, yes," he agreed. "Hit had been,--I put it thar. I've made many a run of whiskey in my young days--and I've seed the folly of it. I reckon you fool boys'll have to see the folly of it too befo' yo've got yo' satisfy.

As for Creed Bonbright, he 'pears to think that if we have plenty of law in the Turkey Tracks we'll all go to heaven in a hand-basket. Mebbe he's right, and then agin mebbe he's wrong; but this I know, ain't anybody goin' to jump on him in my house, and he gets a fair show when fightin'

time comes."

"Well, if he ain't standin' in with the marshal, what does he--" began Andy's high-pitched boyish voice, when somebody called, "Good evening,"

in pleasant tones, and Bonbright himself got off a light-stepping mule, tethered him to the fence, and came toward the cabin.

He had just returned from a meeting of the County Court at Hepzibah, where he did good service in representing the needs of his district, fighting hard for more money for schools--the plan heretofore had been to let them have only their own pro rata of the school tax.

"It'll pay you a heap better to educate the mountain people than to hire their keep in jail," he said to his fellow justices of the valley. "The blue-backed speller is the best cure for crime in the mountains that I know of."

He failed to get this; but he succeeded in another matter, one less near his heart, but calculated to appeal perhaps more strongly to his const.i.tuents; he secured the opening of a highway for which the people in the two Turkey Tracks had struggled and prayed more than twenty years. It was with the pride of this victory strong in him that he had set out for Judith's play-party. The young fellow might have been pardoned a half wistful belief that this first success was the entering wedge and would lead swiftly to that standing with his neighbours lacking which he was helpless. Yet the sons of the house replied but gruffly to his greeting, and, as though his coming had been a signal, the younger group promptly disappeared in the direction of the main cabin.

At the old man's hearty invitation, Creed seated himself on the doorstep, while his host went in for a coal from the smouldering hearth to light his pipe, and joined the guest a moment later.

"Well sir, and how's the law coming on these days?" inquired old Jephthah somewhat humorously.

"I reckon it's doing pretty well," allowed Creed. "The law's all right, Mr. Turrentine; it's what our people need; and if there comes any failure it's bound to be in me, not in the law."

"That's right," old Jephthah commended him. "Stand up for yo' principles.

Ef you go into a thing, back it. I never could get on with these here good-Lord-good-devil folks. I like to know whar a man's at--cain't hit him unless 'n you do."