Mingo Part 2

But he did not become a hermit by any means. The young men of Gullettsville made Sunday excursions to his farm, and he was pleased to treat them with great deference. Moreover, he began to go upon little journeys of his own across Sugar Valley. He made no mystery of his intentions; but one day there was considerable astonishment when he rode into Gullettsville on horseback, with Puss Pringle behind him, and informed the proper authorities of his desire to make her Mrs. Puss Poteet. Miss Pringle was not a handsome woman, but she was a fair representative of that portion of the race that has poisoned whole generations by improving the frying-pan and perpetuating "fatty bread."

The impression she made upon those who saw her for the first time was one of lank flatness--to convey a vivid idea rather clumsily. But she was neither lank nor flat. The total absence of all attempts at artificial ornamentation gave the future Mrs. Poteet an appearance of forlorn shiftlessness that was not even slightly justified by the facts. She was a woman past the heyday of youth, but of considerable energy, and possessed of keen powers of observation. Whatever was feminine about her was of that plaintive variety which may be depended upon to tell the story of whole generations of narrow, toilsome, and unprofitable lives.

There was one incident connected with Miss Pringle's antenuptial ride that rather intensified the contempt which the Mountain entertained for the Valley. As she jogged down the street, clinging confidently, if not comfortably, to Teague Poteet's suspenders, two young ladies of Gullettsville chanced to be pa.s.sing along. They walked slowly, their arms twined about each other's waists. They wore white muslin dresses, and straw hats with wide and jaunty brims, and the loose ends of gay ribbons fluttered about them. These young ladies, fresh from school, and no doubt full of vainglory, greeted the bridal procession with a little explosion of giggles, and when Puss Pringle pushed back her gingham sun-bonnet and innocently gazed upon them, they turned up their noses, sniffed the air scornfully, and made such demonstrations as no feminine mind, however ignorant in other directions, could fail to interpret.

Miss Pringle had not learned the art of tossing her head and sniffing the air, but she half closed her eyes and gave the young ladies a look that meant something more than scorn. She said nothing to Teague, for she was in hopes he had not observed the tantrums of the school-girls.

As for Teague, he saw the whole affair, and was out to the quick. In addition to the latent pride of his cla.s.s, he inherited the sensitiveness of his ancestors, but, turning his eyes neither to the right nor to the left, he jogged along to the wedding. He carried his wife home, and thereafter avoided Gullettsville. When he was compelled to buy coffee and sugar, or other necessary luxuries, he rode forty miles across the mountain to Villa Bay.

He had been married a year or more when, one afternoon, he was compelled to ride down to Gullettsville under whip and spur for a doctor. There was a good deal of confused activity in the town. Old men and young boys were stirring around with blue c.o.c.kades in their hats, and the women wore blue rosettes on their bosoms. Three negroes in uniform--a contribution from the nearest railroad town--were parading up and down the straggling street with fife and drums, and a number of men were planting a flag-pole in front of the court-house.

No conscientious historian can afford to ignore a coincidence, and it so happened that upon the very day that league Poteet's wife presented him with the puzzle of a daughter, Fate presented his countrymen with the problem of war. That night, sitting in the door of his house and smoking his pipe, Teague witnessed other developments of the coincidence. In the next room the baby-girl squalled most persistently; down in the valley the premonitions of war made themselves heard through the narrow throat of a small cannon which, until then, had been used only to celebrate the Fourth of July.

The noise of a horse's hoofs roused Teague's hounds, and some one called out from the road--

"h.e.l.lo, Poteet!"

"Ah-yi!"

"You hearn the racket?"

"My gal-baby keeps up sich a hollerin' I can't hear my own years."

"_Oh!_"

"You better b'lieve! Nine hours ole, an' mighty peart. What's them Restercrats in the valley cuttin' up the'r scollops fer?"

"Whoopin' up se_say_sion. Sou' Ca'liny done plum gone out, an' Georgy a-gwine."

Teague Poteet blew a long, thin cloud of home-made tobacco-smoke heavenward, leaned back heavily in his chair, and replied--

"Them air Restercrats kin go wher' they dang please; I'm a-gwine to stay right slambang in the United States."

There was a little pause, as if the man on horseback was considering the matter. Then the response came--

"Here's at you!"

"Can't you 'light?" asked Poteet.

"Not now," said the other; "I'll git on furder."

The man on horseback rode on across the mountain to his home. Another mountaineer, seeing the rockets and hearing the sound of the cannon, came down to Poteet's for information. He leaned over the brush-fence.

"What's up, Teague?"

"Gal-baby; reg'lar surbinder."

"_Shoo!_ won't my ole 'oman holler! What's up down yan?"

"Them dad-blasted Restercrats a secedin' out'n the United States."

"They say theyer airter savin' of the'r n.i.g.g.e.rs," said the man at the fence.

"Well, I hain't got none, and I hain't a wantin' none; an' it hain't been ten minnits sence I ups an' says to Dave Hightower, s' I, 'The United States is big enough for me.'"

"Now you er makin' the bark fly," said the man at the fence.

During the night other men came down the mountain as far as Poteet's, and always with the same result.

The night broadened into day, and other days and nights followed. In the valley the people had their problem of war, and on the mountain Teague Poteet had the puzzle of his daughter. One was full of doubt and terror, and death, and the other full of the pleasures of peace. As the tide of war surged nearer and nearer, and the demand for recruits became clamorous, the people of the valley bethought them of the gaunt but st.u.r.dy men who lived on the mountain. A conscript officer, representing the necessities of a new government, made a journey thither--a little excursion full of authority and consequence. As he failed to return, another officer, similarly equipped and commissioned, rode forth and disappeared, and then another and another; and it was not until a little search expedition had been fitted out that the Confederates discovered that the fastnesses of Hog Mountain concealed a strong and dangerous organisation of Union men. There was a good deal of indignation in the valley when this state of affairs became known, and there was some talk of organising a force for the purpose of driving the mountaineers away from their homes. But somehow the Valley never made up its mind to attack the Mountain, and, upon such comfortable terms as these, the Mountain was very glad to let the Valley alone.

After a while the Valley had larger troubles to contend with.

Gullettsville became in some measure a strategic point, and the left wing of one army and the right wing of the other manoeuvred for possession. The left wing finally gave way, and the right wing marched in and camped round about, introducing to the distracted inhabitants General Tec.u.mseh Sherman and some of his lieutenants. The right wing had learned that a number of Union men were concealed on the mountain, and one or two little excursion parties were made up for the purpose of forming their acquaintance. These excursions were successful to this extent, that some of the members thereof returned to the friendly shelter of the right wing with bullet-holes in them, justly feeling that they had been outraged. The truth is, the Pot.e.e.t.s, and the Pringles, and the Hightowers of Hog Mountain had their own notions of what const.i.tuted Union men. They desired to stay in the United States on their own terms. If n.o.body pestered them, they pestered n.o.body.

Meanwhile league Poteet's baby had grown to be a thumping girl, and hardly a day pa.s.sed that she did not accompany her father in his excursions. When the contending armies came in sight, Teague and his comrades spent a good deal of their time in watching them. Each force pa.s.sed around an elbow of the mountain, covering a distance of nearly sixty miles, and thus for days and weeks this portentous panorama was spread out before these silent watchers. Surely never before did a little girl have two armies for her playthings. The child saw the movements of the soldiers, the glitter of the array, and the waving of the banners; she heard the dull thunder of the cannon, and the sharp rattle of the musketry. When the sun went down, and the camp-fire shone out, it seemed that ten thousand stars had fallen at her feet, and sometimes sweet strains of music stole upward on the wings of the night, and slipped heavenward through the sighing pines.

The grey columns swung right and left, and slowly fell back; the blue columns swayed right and left, and slowly pressed forward--sometimes beneath clouds of sulphurous smoke, sometimes beneath heavy mists of rain, sometimes in the bright sunshine. They swung and swayed slowly out of sight, and Hog Mountain and Gullettsville were left at peace.

The child grew and thrived. In the midst of a gaunt and sallow generation she shone radiantly beautiful. In some mysterious way she inherited the beauty, and grace, and refinement of a Frenchwoman.

Merely as a phenomenon, she ought to have reminded league of his name and lineage; but Teague had other matters to think of. "Sis ain't no dirt-eater," he used to say, and to this extent only would he commit himself, his surroundings having developed in him that curious excess of caution and reserve which characterises his cla.s.s.

As for Puss Poteet, she sat and rocked herself and rubbed snuff, and regarded her daughter as one of the profound mysteries. She was in a state of perpetual bewilderment and surprise, equalled only by her apparent indifference. She allowed herself to be hustled around by Sis without serious protest, and submitted, as Teague did, to the new order of things as quietly as possible.

Meanwhile the people in the valley were engaged in adjusting themselves to the changed condition of affairs. The war was over, but it had left some deep scars here and there, and those who had engaged in it gave their attention to healing these--a troublesome and interminable task, be it said, which by no means kept pace with the impatience of the victors, whipped into fury by the subtle but ign.o.ble art of the politician. There was no lack of despair in the valley, but out of it all prosperity grew, and the promise of a most remarkable future.

Behind the confusion of politics, of one sort and another, the spirit of Progress rose and shook her ambitious wings.

Something of all this must have made itself felt on the mountain, for one day Teague Poteet pushed his wide-brimmed wool hat from over his eyes, with an air of astonishment. Puss had just touched upon a very important matter.

"I reckon in reason," she said, "we oughter pack Sis off to school some'rs. She'll thes nat'ally spile here."

"Hain't you larnt her how to read an' write an' cipher?" asked Teague.

"I started in," said Mrs. Poteet, "but, Lord! I hain't more'n opened a book tell she know'd mor'n I dast to know ef I wuz gwine to die fer it.

Hit'll take somebody lots smarter'n' stronger'n me."

Teague laughed, and then relapsed into seriousness. After a while he called Sis. The girl came running in, her dark eyes flashing, her black hair bewitchingly tangled, and her cheeks flushing with a colour hitherto unknown to the mountain.

"What now, pap?"

"I wuz thes a-thinkin' ef maybe you oughtn't to bresh up an' start to school down in Gullettsville."

"O pap!" the girl exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight. She was about to spring upon Teague and give him a severe hugging, when suddenly her arms dropped to her side, the flush died out of her face, and she flopped herself down upon a chair. Teague paid no attention to this.

"Yes, siree," he continued, as if pursuing a well-developed line of argument; "when a gal gits ez big ez you is, she hain't got no business to be a-gwine a-whoopin' an' a-hollerin' an' a-rantin' an' a-rompin'

acrost the face er the yeth. The time's done come when they oughter be tuck up an' made a lady out'n; an' the nighest way is to sen' 'em to school. That's whar you a-gwine--down to Gullettsville to school."

"I shan't, an' I won't--I won't, I won't, I _won't!_" exclaimed Sis, clenching her hands and stamping her feet. "I'll die first."

Teague had never seen her so excited,