The Heart of the Hills Part 7

"Mavis's gone to the settlemints, honey. Her daddy sent fer her an' I made her go. She's whar she belongs--up thar with him an'

yo' mammy. Go put yo' hoss in the stable an' come an' live right here with us."

Jason shook his head and without answer turned his horse down the creek again. A little way down he saw three Honeycutts coming, all armed, and he knew that to avoid pa.s.sing his grandfather's house they were going to cross the ridge and strike the head of their own creek. One of them was a boy--"little Aaron"--less than two years older than himself, and little Aaron not only had a pistol buckled around him, but carried a Winchester across his saddle- bow. The two men grinned and nodded good-naturedly to him, but the boy Aaron pulled his horse across the road and stopped Jason, who had stood many a taunt from him.

"Which side air you on NOW?" asked Aaron contemptuously.

"You git out o' my road!"

"Hit's my road now," said Aaron, tapping his Winchester, "an' I've got a great notion o' makin' you git offen that ole bag o' bones an' dance fer me." One of the Honeycutts turned in his saddle.

"Come on," he shouted angrily, "an' let that boy alone."

"All right," he shouted back, and then to his white, quivering, helpless quarry:

"I'll let ye off this time, but next time--"

"I'll be ready fer ye," broke in Jason.

The lad's mind was made up now. He put the old nag in a lope down the rocky creek. He did not even go to his grandfather's for dinner, but turned at the river in a gallop for town. The rock- p.e.c.k.e.r, and even Mavis, were gone from his mind, and the money in his pocket was going, not for love or learning, but for pistol and cartridge now.

IX

September in the Blue-gra.s.s. The earth cooling from the summer's heat, the nights vigorous and chill, the fields greening with a second spring. Skies long, low, hazy, and gently arched over rolling field and meadow and woodland. The trees gray with the dust that had sifted all summer long from the limestone turnpikes.

The streams shrunken to rivulets that trickled through crevices between broad flat stones and oozed through beds of water-cress and crow-foot, horse-mint and pickerel-weed, the wells low, cisterns empty, and recourse for water to barrels and the sunken ponds. The farmers cutting corn, still green, for stock, and ploughing ragweed strongholds for the sowing of wheat. The hemp an Indian village of gray wigwams. And a time of weeds--indeed the heyday of weeds of every kind, and the harvest time for the king weed of them all. Everywhere his yellow robes were hanging to poles and drying in the warm sun. Everywhere led the conquering war trail of the unkingly usurper, everywhere in his wake was devastation. The iron-weed had given up his purple crown, and yellow wheat, silver-gray oats, and rippling barley had fled at the sight of his banner to the open sunny s.p.a.ces as though to make their last stand an indignant appeal that all might see. Even the proud woodlands looked ragged and drooping, for here and there the ruthless marauder had flanked one and driven a battalion into its very heart, and here and there charred stumps told plainly how he had overrun, destroyed, and ravished the virgin soil beneath. A fuzzy little parasite was throttling the life of the Kentuckians'

hemp. A bewhiskered moralist in a far northern State would one day try to drive the kings of his racing-stable to the plough. A meddling band of fanatical teetotalers would overthrow his merry monarch, King Barleycorn, and the hara.s.sed son of the Blue-gra.s.s, whether he would or not, must turn to the new pretender who was in the Kentuckians' midst, uninvited and self-throned.

And with King Tobacco were coming his own human va.s.sals that were to prove a new social discord in the land--up from the river- bottoms of the Ohio and down from the foot-hills of the c.u.mberland--to plant, worm, tend, and fit those yellow robes to be stuffed into the mouth of the world and spat back again into the helpless face of the earth. And these va.s.sals were supplanting native humanity as the plant was supplanting the native products of the soil. And with them and the new king were due in time a train of evils to that native humanity, creating disaffection, dividing households against themselves, and threatening with ruin the lordly social structure itself.

But, for all this, the land that early September morning was a land of peace and plenty, and in field, meadow, and woodland the most foreign note of the landscape was a spot of crimson in the crotch of a high staked and ridered fence on the summit of a little hill, and that spot was a little girl. She had on an old- fashioned poke-bonnet of deep pink, her red dress was of old- fashioned homespun, her stockings were of yarn, and her rough shoes should have been on the feet of a boy. Had the vanished forests and cane-brakes of the eighteenth century covered the land, had the wild beasts and wild men come back to roam them, had the little girl's home been a stockade on the edge of the wilderness, she would have fitted perfectly to the time and the scene, as a little daughter of Daniel Boone. As it was, she felt no less foreign than she looked, for the strangeness of the land and of the people still possessed her so that her native shyness had sunk to depths that were painful. She had a new ordeal before her now, for in her sinewy little hands were a paper bag, a first reader, and a spelling-book, and she was on her way to school.

Beneath her the white turnpike wound around the hill and down into a little hollow, and on the crest of the next low hill was a little frame house with a belfry on top. Even while she sat there with parted lips, her face in a tense dream and her eyes dark with dread and indecision, the bell from the little school-house clanged through the still air with a sudden, sharp summons that was so peremptory and personal that she was almost startled from her perch. Not daring to loiter any longer, she leaped lightly to the ground and started in breathless haste up and over the hill.

As she went down it, she could see horses. .h.i.tched to the fence around the yard and school-children crowding upon the porch and filing into the door. The last one had gone in before she reached the school-house gate, and she stopped with a thumping heart that quite failed her then and there, for she retreated backward through the gate, to be sure that no one saw her, crept along the stone wall, turned into a lane, and climbed a worm fence into the woods behind the school-house. There she sat down on a log, miserably alone, and over the sunny strange slopes of this new world, on over the foothills, her mind flashed to the big far-away mountains and, dropping her face into her hands, she began to sob out her loneliness and sorrow. The cry did her good, and by and by she lifted her head, rubbed her reddened eyes with the back of one hand, half rose to go to the school-house, and sank helplessly down on the thick gra.s.s by the side of the log. The sun beat warmly and soothingly down on her. The gra.s.s and even the log against her shoulders were warm and comforting, and the hum of insects about her was so drowsy that she yawned and settled deeper into the gra.s.s, and presently she pa.s.sed into sleep and dreams of Jason. Jason was in the feud. She could see him crouched in some bushes and peering through them on the lookout evidently for some Honeycutt; and slipping up the other side of the hill was a Honeycutt looking for Jason. Somehow she knew it was the Honeycutt who had slain the boy's father, and she saw the man creep through the brush and worm his way on his belly to a stump above where Jason sat. She saw him thrust his Winchester through the leaves, she tried to shriek a warning to Jason, and she awoke so weak with terror that she could hardly scramble to her feet. Just then the air was rent with shrill cries, she saw school-boys piling over a fence and rushing toward her hiding-place, and, her wits yet ungathered, she turned and fled in terror down the hill, nor did she stop until the cries behind her grew faint; and then she was much ashamed of herself. n.o.body was in pursuit of her--it was the dream that had frightened her. She could almost step on the head of her own shadow now, and that fact and a pang of hunger told her it was noon. It was noon recess back at the school and those school-boys were on their way to a playground. She had left her lunch at the log where she slept, and so she made her way back to it, just in time to see two boys pounce on the little paper bag lying in the gra.s.s. There was no shyness about her then--that bag was hers--and she flashed forward.

"Gimme that poke!"

The wrestling stopped and, startled by the cry and the apparition, the two boys fell apart.

"What?" said the one with the bag in his hand, while the other stared at Mavis with puzzled amazement.

"Gimme that poke!" blazed the girl, and the boy laughed, for the word has almost pa.s.sed from the vocabulary of the Blue-gra.s.s. He held it high.

"Jump for it!" he teased.

"I hain't goin' to jump fer it--hit's mine."

Her hands clenched and she started slowly toward him.

"Give her the bag," said the other boy so imperatively that the little girl stopped with a quick and trustful shift of her own burden to him.

"She's got to jump for it!"

The other boy smiled, and it strangely seemed to Mavis that she had seen that smile before.

"Oh, I reckon not," he said quietly, and in a trice the two boys in a close, fierce grapple were rocking before her and the boy with the bag went to the earth first.

"Gouge him!" shrieked the mountain girl, and she rushed to them while they were struggling, s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag from the loosened fingers, and, seeing the other boys on a run for the scene, fled for the lane. From the other side of the fence she saw the two lads rise, one still smiling, the other crying with anger; the school-bell clanged and she was again alone. Hurriedly she ate the bacon and corn-bread in the bag and then she made her way back along the lane, by the stone wall, through the school-house gate, and gathering her courage with one deep breath, she climbed the steps resolutely and stood before the open door.

The teacher, a tall man in a long black frock-coat, had his back to her, the room was crowded, and she saw no vacant seat. Every pair of eyes within was raised to her, and instantly she caught another surprised and puzzled stare from the boy who had taken her part a little while before. The teacher, seeing the attention of his pupils fixed somewhere behind him, turned to see the quaint figure, dismayed and helpless, in the doorway, and he went quickly toward her.

"This way," he said kindly, and pointing to a seat, he turned again to his pupils.

Still they stared toward the new-comer, and he turned again. The little girl's flushed face was still hidden by her bonnet, but before he reached her to tell her quietly she must take it off, she had seen that all the heads about her were bare and was pulling it off herself--disclosing a riotous ma.s.s of black hair, combed straight back from her forehead and gathered into a Psyche knot at the back of her head. Slowly the flush pa.s.sed, but not for some time did she lift the extraordinary lashes that veiled her eyes to take a furtive glance about her. But, as the pupils bent more to their books, she grew bolder and looked about oftener and keenly, and she saw with her own eyes and in every pair of eyes whose glance she met, how different she was from all the other girls. For it was a look of wonder and amus.e.m.e.nt that she encountered each time, and sometimes two girls would whisper behind their hands and laugh, or one would nudge her desk-mate to look around at the stranger, so that the flush came back to Mavis's face and stayed there. The tall teacher saw, too, and understood, and, to draw no more attention to her than was necessary, he did not go near her until little recess. As he expected, she did not move from her seat when the other pupils trooped out, and when the room was empty he beckoned her to come to his desk, and in a moment, with her two books clasped in her hands, she stood shyly before him, meeting his kind gray searching eyes with unwavering directness.

"You were rather late coming to school."

"I was afeerd." The teacher smiled, for her eyes were fearless.

"What is your name?"

"Mavis Hawn."

Her voice was slow, low, and rich, and in some wonder he half unconsciously repeated the unusual name.

"Where do you live?"

"Down the road a piece--'bout a whoop an' a holler."

"What? Oh, I see."

He smiled, for she meant to measure distance by sound, and she had used merely a variation of the "far cry" of Elizabethan days.

"Your father works in tobacco?" She nodded.

"You come from near the Ohio River?"

She looked puzzled.

"I come from the mountains."

"Oh!"

He understood now her dress and speech, and he was not surprised at the answer to his next question.

"I hain't nuver been to school. Pap couldn't spare me."

"Can you read and write?"