The Call of the Cumberlands Part 12

"Thar's a-goin' ter be a dancin' party over ter Wile McCager's mill come Sat.u.r.day," he insinuatingly suggested. "I reckon ye'll go over thar with me, won't ye, Sally?"

He waited for her usual delighted a.s.sent, but Sally only told him absently and without enthusiasm that she would "study about it." At last, however, her restraint broke, and, looking up, she abruptly demanded:

"Air ye a-goin' away, Samson?"

"Who's been a-talkin' ter ye?" demanded the boy, angrily.

For a moment, the girl sat silent. Silver mists were softening under a rising moon. The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging.

Finally, she spoke in a grave voice:

"Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She made a weary gesture toward the great beyond.

"He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally. If I'd been plumb sartin in my mind, I'd a-told ye myself--not but what I knows," he hastily amended, "thet he meant hit friendly."

"Air ye a-goin'?"

"I'm studyin' about hit."

He awaited objection, but none came. Then, with a piquing of his masculine vanity, he demanded:

"Hain't ye a-keerin', Sally, whether I goes, or not?"

The girl grew rigid. Her fingers on the crumbling plank of the stile's top tightened and gripped hard. The moonlit landscape seemed to whirl in a dizzy circle. Her face did not betray her, nor her voice, though she had to gulp down a rising lump in her throat before she could answer calmly.

"I thinks ye had ought ter go, Samson."

The boy was astonished. He had avoided the subject for fear of her opposition--and tears.

Then, slowly, she went on as though repeating a lesson painstakingly conned:

"There hain't nothin' in these here hills fer ye, Samson. Down thar, ye'll see lots of things thet's new--an' civilized an' beautiful! Ye'll see lots of gals thet kin read an' write, gals dressed up in all kinds of fancy fixin's." Her glib words ran out and ended in a sort of inward gasp.

Compliment came hardly and awkwardly to Samson's lips. He reached for the girl's hand, and whispered:

"I reckon I won't see no gals thet's as purty as you be, Sally. I reckon ye knows, whether I goes or stays, we're a-goin' ter git married."

She drew her hand away, and laughed, a little bitterly. In the last day, she had ceased to be a child, and become a woman with all the soul-aching possibilities of a woman's intuitions.

"Samson," she said, "I hain't askin' ye ter make me no promises. When ye sees them other gals--gals thet kin read an' write--I reckon mebby ye'll think diff'rent. I can't hardly spell out printin' in the fust reader."

Her lover's voice was scornful of the imagined dangers, as a recruit may be of the battle terrors--before he has been under fire. He slipped his arm about her and drew her over to him.

"Honey," he said, "ye needn't fret about thet. Readin' an' writin'

can't make no difference fer a woman. Hit's mighty important fer a man, but you're a gal."

"You're a-goin' ter think diff'rent atter awhile," she insisted. "When ye goes, I hain't a-goin' ter be expectin' ye ter come back ... But"

--the resolution in her voice for a moment quavered as she added--"but G.o.d knows I'm a-goin' ter be hopin'!"

"Sally!" The boy rose, and paced up and down in the road. "Air ye goin' ter be ag'inst me, too? Don't ye see that I wants ter have a chanst? Can't ye trust me? I'm jest a-tryin' to amount to something.

I'm plumb tired of bein' ornery an' no 'count."

She nodded.

"I've done told ye," she said, wearily, "thet I thinks ye ought ter do hit."

He stood there in the road looking down at her and the twisted smile that lifted only one corner of her lips, while the other drooped. The moonlight caught her eyes; eyes that were trying, like the lips, to smile, but that were really looking away into the future, which she saw stripped of companionship and love, and gray with the ashiness of wretched desolation. And, while he was seeing the light of the simulated cheeriness die out in her face, she was seeing the strange, exalted glow, of which she was more than half-afraid, kindle in his pupils. It was as though she were giving up the living fire out of her own heart to set ablaze the ambition and antic.i.p.ation in his own.

That glow in Samson's eyes she feared and shrank from, as she might have flinched before the blaze of insanity. It was a thing which her mountain superst.i.tion could not understand, a thing not wholly normal; a manifestation that came to the stoic face and transformed it, when the eyes of the brain and heart were seeing things which she herself could not see. It was the proclamation of the part of Samson which she could not comprehend, as though he were looking into a spirit world of weird and abnormal things. It was the light of an enthusiasm such as his love for her could not bring to his eyes--and it told her that the strongest and deepest part of Samson did not belong to her. Now, as the young man stood there before her, and her little world of hope and happiness seemed crumbling into ruins, and she was steeling her soul to sacrifice herself and let him go, he was thinking, not of what it was costing her in heart-break, but seeing visions of all the great world held for him beyond the barriers of the mountains. The light in his eyes seemed to flaunt the victory of the enthusiasms that had nothing to do with her.

Samson came forward, and held out his arms. But Sally drew away with a little shudder, and crouched at the end of the stile.

"What's ther matter, Sally?" he demanded in surprise, and, as he bent toward her, his eyes lost the strange light she feared, and she laughed a little nervous laugh, and rose from her seat.

"Nothin' hain't ther matter--now," she said, stanchly.

Lescott and Samson discussed the matter frequently. At times, the boy was obstinate in his determination to remain; at other times, he gave way to the yearnings for change and opportunity. But the lure of the palette and brush possessed him beyond resistance and his taciturnity melted, when in the painter's company, to a roughly poetic form of expression.

"Thet sunrise," he announced one morning, setting down his milk-pail to gaze at the east, "is jest like the sparkle in a gal's eyes when she's tickled at somethin' ye've said about her. An,' when the sun sets, hit's like the whole world was a woman blushin'."

The dance on Sat.u.r.day was to be something more portentous than a mere frolic. It would be a clan gathering to which the South adherents would come riding up and down Misery and its tributaries from "nigh abouts"

and "over yon." From forenoon until after midnight, shuffle, jig and fiddling would hold high, if rough, carnival. But, while the younger folk abandoned themselves to these diversions, the grayer heads would gather in more serious conclave. Jesse Purvy had once more beaten back death, and his mind had probably been devising, during those bed-ridden days and nights, plans of reprisal. According to current report, Purvy had announced that his would-be a.s.sa.s.sin dwelt on Misery, and was "marked down." So, there were obvious exigencies which the Souths must prepare to meet. In particular, the clan must thrash out to definite understanding the demoralizing report that Samson South, their logical leader, meant to abandon them, at a crisis when war-clouds were thickening.

The painter had finally resolved to cut the Gordian knot, and leave the mountains. He had trained on Samson to the last piece all his artillery of argument. The case was now submitted with the suggestion that the boy take three months to consider, and that, if he decided affirmatively, he should notify Lescott in advance of his coming. He proposed sending Samson a small library of carefully picked books, which the mountaineer eagerly agreed to devour in the interval.

Lescott consented, however, to remain over Sat.u.r.day, and go to the dance, since he was curious to observe what pressure was brought to bear on the boy, and to have himself a final word of argument after the kinsmen had spoken.

Sat.u.r.day morning came after a night of torrential rain, which had left the mountains steaming under a reek of fog and pitching clouds.

Hillside streams ran freshets, and creek-bed roads were foaming and boiling into waterfalls. Sheep and cattle huddled forlornly under their shelters of shelving rock, and only the geese seemed happy.

Far down the dripping shoulders of the mountains trailed ragged streamers of vapor. Here and there along the lower slopes hung puffs of smoky mist as though silent sh.e.l.ls were bursting from unseen artillery over a vast theater of combat.

But, as the morning wore on, the sun fought its way to view in a sc.r.a.p of overhead blue. A freshening breeze plunged into the reek, and sent it scurrying in broken cloud ranks and shredded tatters. The steamy heat gave way under a dissipating sweep of coolness, until the skies smiled down on the hills and the hills smiled back. From log cabins and plank houses up and down Misery and its tributaries, men and women began their hegira toward the mill. Some came on foot, carrying their shoes in their hands, but those were only near-by dwellers. Others made saddle journeys of ten or fifteen, or even twenty, miles, and the beasts that carried a single burden were few. Lescott rode in the wake of Samson, who had Sally on a pillow at his back, and along the seven miles of journey he studied the strange procession. It was, for the most part, a solemn cavalcade, for these are folk who "take their pleasures sadly." Possibly, some of the sun-bonneted, strangely-garbed women were reflecting on the possibilities which mountain-dances often develop into tragic actualities. Possibly, others were having their enjoyment discounted by the necessity of "dressing up" and wearing shoes.

Sometimes, a slowly ambling mule bore an entire family; the father managing the reins with one hand and holding a baby with the other, while his rifle lay balanced across his pommel and his wife sat solemnly behind him on a sheepskin or pillion. Many of the men rode side-saddles, and sacks bulky at each end hinted of such baggage as is carried in jugs. Lescott realized from the frank curiosity with which he was regarded that he had been a topic of discussion, and that he was now being "sized up." He was the false prophet who was weaving a spell over Samson! Once, he heard a sneering voice from the wayside comment as he rode by.

"He looks like a d.a.m.ned parson."

Glancing back, he saw a tow-headed youth glowering at him out of pinkish albino eyes. The way lay in part along the creek-bed, where wagons had ground the disintegrating rock into deep ruts as smooth as walls of concrete. Then, it traversed a country of palisading cliffs and immensity of forest, park-like and splendid. Strangely picturesque suspension bridges with rough stairways at their ends spanned waters too deep for fording. Frame houses showed along the banks of the creek --grown here to a river--unplaned and unpainted of wall, but brightly touched with window-and door-frames of bright yellow or green or blue.

This was the territory where the Souths held dominance, and it was pouring out its people.

They came before noon to the mouth of Dryhole Creek, and the house of Wile McCager. Already, the picket fence was lined with tethered horses and mules, and a canvas-covered wagon came creeping in behind its yoke of oxen. Men stood cl.u.s.tered in the road, and at the entrance a woman, nursing her baby at her breast, welcomed and gossiped with the arrivals.

The house of Wile McCager loaned itself to entertainment. It was not of logs, but of undressed lumber, and boasted a front porch and two front rooms entered by twin doors facing on a triangular alcove. In the recess between these portals stood a washstand, surmounted by a china basin and pitcher--a declaration of affluence. From the interior of the house came the sounds of fiddling, though these strains of "Turkey in the Straw" were only by way of prelude. Lescott felt, though he could not say just what concrete thing told him, that under the shallow note of merry-making brooded the major theme of a troublesome problem. The seriousness was below the surface, but insistently depressing. He saw, too, that he himself was mixed up with it in a fashion, which might become dangerous, when a few jugs of white liquor had been emptied.

It would be some time yet before the crowd warmed up. Now, they only stood about and talked, and to Lescott they gave a gravely polite greeting, beneath which was discernible an undercurrent of hostility.

As the day advanced, the painter began picking out the more influential clansmen, by the fashion in which they fell together into groups, and took themselves off to the mill by the racing creek for discussion. While the young persons danced and "sparked" within, and the more truculent lads escaped to the road to pa.s.s the jug, and forecast with youthful war-fever "cleanin' out the Hollmans," the elders were deep in ways and means. If the truce could be preserved for its unexpired period of three years, it was, of course, best. In that event, crops could be cultivated, and lives saved. But, if Jesse Purvy chose to regard his shooting as a breach of terms, and struck, he would strike hard, and, in that event, best defense lay in striking first.

Samson would soon be twenty-one. That he would take his place as head of the clan had until now never been questioned--and he was talking of desertion. For that, a pink-skinned foreigner, who wore a woman's bow of ribbon at his collar, was to blame. The question of loyalty must be squarely put up to Samson, and it must be done to-day. His answer must be definite and unequivocal. As a guest of Spicer South, Lescott was ent.i.tled to that consideration which is accorded amba.s.sadors.