Southern Literature From 1579-1895 Part 55

WORKS.

A Brother to Dragons.

Farrier La.s.s o' Piping Pebworth.

Virginia of Virginia.

The Quick or the Dead?

According to St. John.

Athelwold, [drama].

Barbara Dering, [sequel to The Quick or the Dead?]

Nurse Crumpet Tells the Story.

Story of Arnon.

Inja.

Witness of the Sun.

Herod and Mariamne, [drama].

Poems, [scattered in magazines].

Tanis, the Sang-Digger.

TANIS.

(_From Tanis, the Sang-Digger._[49])

Gilman was driving along one of the well-kept turnpikes that wind about the Warm Springs Valley. He recognized the austere and solemn beauty that hemmed him in from the far-off outer world; but at the same time he was contrasting it with the sea-coast of his native State, Ma.s.sachusetts, and a certain creeping homesickness began to rise about his heart.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ~Model School, Peabody Normal College.~]

In addition to this, he had left his delicate wife suffering with an acute neuralgic headache, and also saddened by a yearning for the picturesque old farm-house in which he had been born, and where they had lived during the first year of marriage. The trap which Gilman drove was filled with surveying instruments, and, as he turned into the rough mountain road, which led towards the site of the new railway for which he was now prospecting, the smaller ones began to rattle together and slide from the seat beside him. Finally, as the cart slipped against a stone, the level bounced into a puddle. He was about to jump out when a bold, ringing voice called to him:

"Set still--A'll pick hit up."

Then a figure slid down the rocky bank at his right, her one garment wrinkling from her bare, st.u.r.dy legs during the performance.

Gilman had never seen anything like her in his thirty years of varied experience.

She was very tall. A curtain of rough, glittering curls hung to her knees. Her face, clear with that clearness which only a mountain wind can bring, was white as a seagull's breast, except where a dark, yet vivid pink melted into the blue veins on her temples and throat. Her round, fresh lips, smooth as a peony-leaf, were parted in a wide laugh, over teeth large and yellow-white, like the grains on an ear of corn. She wore a loose tunic of blue-gray stuff, which reached to the middle of her legs, covered with gra.s.s stains and patches of mould.

Her bare feet, somewhat broadened by walking, were well-shaped, the great toe standing apart from the others, the strong, round ankles, although scratched and bruised, perfectly symmetrical. Her arms, bare almost to the shoulder, were like those with which in imagination we complete the Milo. Eyes, round and colored like the edges of broken gla.s.s, looked out boldly from under her long black eyebrows. Her nose was straight and well cut, but set impertinently.

As she picked up the muddy level she laughed boisterously and wiped it on her frock.

"Thank you," said Gilman, and then, after a second's hesitation, added: "Where are you going? Perhaps I can give you a lift on your way? Will you get in?"

"Well, a done keer ef a do," she said, still staring at him.

She got in and took the level on her knee, then burst out laughing again--

"A reckon yuh wonders what a'm a haw-hawin' at?" she asked, suddenly.

"Well, a'll tell yuh! 'Tiz case a feels jess like this hyuh contrapshun o' yourn. A haint hed a bite sence five this mawnin', and a've got a bubble in th' middle o' me, a ken tell yuh!"

She opened her flexible mouth almost to her ears, showing both rows of speckless teeth, and roaring mirthfully again.

"I've got some sandwiches, here--won't you have one?" said Gilman.

"Dunno--what be they?" she asked, rather suspiciously, eyeing him sidewise.

He explained to her, and she accepted one, tearing from it a huge semi-circle, which she held in her cheek while exclaiming:

"Murder! hain't that good, though? D'yuh eat them things ev'y day? Yuh looks. .h.i.t! You're a real fine-lookin' feller--mos' ez good-lookin' ez Bill."

"Who is Bill?" asked Gilman, much interested in this, his first conversation with a genuine savage.

"Bill? he's muh pard, an' muh brother, too. I come down hyuh tuh git him a drink o' water, but a hain't foun' a spring yit."

"No, there isn't one in several miles," said Gilman.

"Hyuh!" she cried. "Lemme git out." . . . And she was out, with the bound of a deer. "You g'long," she said; "a'm sorry a rode this far wi' you. You'll larf 'bout muh bar foots, an' this hyuh rag o' mine, wi' them po' white trash an' n.i.g.g.e.rs. Whar you fum, anyhow? You hain't a Fuginia feller. A kin tell by yo' talk. You called roots 'ruts'

jess now, an' yuh said we'd 'sun' be whar them other fellers be. Whar you fum?"

"From Ma.s.sachusetts," said Gilman.

"S'that another langidge fuh some name a knows?"

"No--it's the real name of another State."

"Well, hit's 'nuff tuh twis' a body's tongue, fuh life, so a done blame yuh s'much fuh yo' funny talk. Mawnin'." And she began to swing herself upon a great lichen-crested boulder by the roadside. . . . . .

Gilman was naturally curious as to the type of the young barbarian whom he had met on his drive to Black Creek, and, during a pause in his work, he told a young fellow named Watkins of his adventure, and asked him to what cla.s.s the girl belonged.

"I reckon, sir, she was a sang-digger," said Watkins, laughing.

"They're a awful wild lot, mostly bad as they make 'em, with no more idea of right an' wrong than a lot o' ground-horgs."

"But what is a 'sang-digger'?" asked Gilman, more and more curious.

"Well, sir, sang, or ginseng, ez the real name is, is a sorter root that grows thick in the mountains about here. They make some sorter medicine outer it. I've chawed it myself for heartburn. It's right paying, too--sang-digging is, sir; you ken git at least a dollar a pound for it, an' sometimes you ken dig ten pounds in a day, but that's right seldom. Two or three pounds a day is doin' well. They're a awful low set, sir, sang-diggers is. We call 'em 'snakes'

hereabouts, 'cause they don't have no place to live cep'in' in winter, and then they go off somewhere or ruther, to their huts. But in the summer and early autumn they stop where night ketches 'em, an' light a fire an' sleep 'round it. They cert'n'y are a bad lot, sir. They'll steal a sheep or a horse ez quick ez winkin'. Why, t'want a year ago that they stole a mighty pretty mare o' mine, that I set a heap by, an' rid off her tail an' mane a-tearin' through the brush with her.

She got loose somehow an' come back to me. But they stole two horses for ole Mr. Hawkins, down near Fallin' Springs, an' he a'in't been able to git 'em back. There's awful murders an' villainies done by 'em. But some o' them sang-digger gals is awful pretty. . . . Yes, sir, I reckon she was a sang-digger, sure enough."

[This wild creature of the woods was treated kindly by Gilman and his wife, and she finally sacrificed herself to save Mrs. Gilman.]

FOOTNOTE:

[49] By permission of the author, and publishers, the Town Topics Publishing Co., N. Y.

GRACE KING.

GRACE KING was born in New Orleans, the daughter of William W. King, and has made a reputation as a writer of short stories depicting Creole life. Her "Balcony Stories" are like pictures in their vivid intensity.