THE WANDERING WOMEN
WHEN Joslin finally rose and set his face away from the sight of the
hearth fire he had known, with staff and scrip to start out into
the world, he followed along the winding height of land below the
summit leading towards Hell-fer-Sartin—the objective of his father’s
last circuit riding. Here he crossed the Bull Skin Valley, fording
the shallow stream, and made directly into the harder going of the
divide between that stream and the Redbird. Feeding himself as best
he might, he lay out yet another night in the hills; but by this time
the seasoned vigor of his own frame began to reassert itself. He grew
stronger in spite of the pain of his wound, in spite of his long
abstention from wholesome food. He evaded all sounds of life at the
little farms scattered here and there among the mountains. A rail fence
caused him to turn aside; the sight of a smoke drove him deeper back
into the hills.
It was perhaps ten o’clock of the second morning, when he found himself
on the river trail of a fork of the Kentucky River, that he paused
at the sound of a human voice. It seemed not to be approaching, but
stationary—a woman’s voice, now raised in some sort of old ballad
tune. It seemed to him he might go forward.
She sat on a pallet of leaves at the side of the road, a little above
its level, in a sort of natural cave or opening in the cliff face. A
shelf of limestone extended out perhaps twenty feet, and left under it
a sort of open-faced cavern. The roof was black with many smokes—it
always had been black with smoke since the memory of white men in that
region; for here, tradition told, had dwelt the last two Indians of the
Cumberlands, when the whites rallied and slew them both. This white
woman had taken up the ancient lair of men scarce more wild than she
herself seemed now.
She was an old-seeming woman, albeit perhaps once comely. Her dark
hair, not fully grayed, fell about a face once small-featured,
large-eyed. What charm she once had had was past or passing; yet
something of her philosophy of life remained, enabling her to sing at
this hour in the morning.
“Howdy, stranger,” she said, looking at him with a direct and easy
familiarity singular enough in the circumstances, for the mountain
women are shy and silent with men. “Whar ye bound?”
“Howdy,” said David Joslin. “I’m a-goin’ down the creek a ways.”
“If ye air, I wish ye’d see if my darter is along in the field below.
Tell her to come on back home. She’s got her little girl along with
her—ye’ll know ‘em if ye see ‘em.”
“Home?” said David Joslin rather vaguely, looking at the blackened roof
of the cavern. The woman laughed.
“All the home we got, my darter an’ me. We’ve lived here off an’ on
many a year. They call me Annie. They call her Min. Hit’s no difference
about the rest of the name.”
“I know ye hain’t born in these parts or ye’d know about us two,” she
continued. “This has been my home—all I’ve ever had in my life—I
kain’t say how many years. I move up an’ down. Sometimes I’m up on Big
Creek—sometimes on the Kaintucky. I follow the rafts. I’ve even been
Outside. Min, she nuvver has. Some of my other girls has, maybe.”
“Yore other girls?” began Joslin.
“I’ve had seven children—four girls,” said she quietly, unemotionally.
“I don’t know yore fam’ly,” said David Joslin, hesitating still.
“I hain’t got no fam’ly, I told ye, an’ I don’t come o’ no fam’ly. Us
two lives here together—we’re the wanderin’ wimmern—that’s what they
call us in this country. Don’t ye know about us?
“Well, now”—and she turned her once bold eyes upon him with renewed
defiance, as he did not reply—“I told ye I’d had seven children. Ye
want to know who’s the father of Min? I kain’t tell ye rightly. She
couldn’t tell ye rightly who’s the father of her girl she’s got along
with her now. I’ve had seven children. Who’s their fathers?—I don’t
know. What’s more, I don’t keer. What’s the difference? Who air we,
back in the hills? What chancet have we got?”
Joslin stood leaning on his staff, pale, hollow-eyed, gaunt. In his
eyes was a vast pity, a terrible understanding.
“Kin I wait here for a minute or so?” said he. “I’m right tired.”
“Ye’ve been hurt,” said she, pointing to his bandaged head, for which
he had made such care as he might. “Well, I don’t ask ye no questions.
I’ve seen plenty of men hurt, in the raftin’ times.”
“We’re stoppin’ here now,” she went on explaining. “Because, mought
come a tide any time, an’ then the rafts’ll come. They tie up yander at
the big tree thar—the men come acrosst. Well, here’s home for Min an’
me. She’s young. I’m gittin’ pretty old. Few cares fer such as me.”
Then she went on. “That’s our life, stranger. Ye kin guess the rest.
We’re the wanderin’ wimmern. There’s no hope fer us. We never had no
chancet.”
“Kin ye read?” asked David Joslin quietly. “Kin ye write? Kin yore
darter?”
She shook her head.
“I kin read jest a little bit,” said he himself slowly. “I kin write
jest a little bit. Ye say ye’ve had no chancet. That’s true. What
chancet have ary of us here? Whar can we learn anything? I’m a-goin’
Outside. I’m a-goin’ on a journey.”
“Set down an’ eat,” said she, with the unfailing hospitality of the
mountains. “We hain’t got much. I kin parch ye some corn, maybe. Min’s
down below trying to find some hickernuts an’ some corn. Folks don’t
mind our foragin’ around. Why, even sometimes I’ve slept in a cabin now
an’ then. They don’t mind if we sleep in the corn cribs sometimes when
the weather’s cold. The husks is right warm—warmer’n leaves, I kin
tell ye that.”
Joslin looked about him. A ragged gunny sack or so, a quilt or two,
were heaped into one corner over a pile of leaves—there was no other
sign of couch. In another corner of the cavern a blackened spot showed
where they built their fire. With flint and steel the old woman now
began her fire anew. There was a broken bit of iron, once a skillet. In
this she managed to parch some grains of corn for the traveler.
“Eat, stranger,” said she. “Hit’s from Annie, the wanderin’ womern,
that never had a chancet.”
He ate, and drank from a broken gourd of water which she gave to
him. For a time he sat looking across the pageant of the hills, still
radiant in their autumn finery.
At length he placed a hand in his pocket. “Take this,” said he. “I’ve
got just thirty-five cents. I’ll keep the dime, fer I mought need it. I
know the people in the mountings don’t take pay fer what they give to
eat, but won’t ye please take this?”
“What do ye mean, man?” said she looking at him curiously, but refusing
the money which he offered. “Ye seem like a quare feller to me. Air ye
outen yore haid?”
“Maybe I got some good sense knocked into my haid, I don’t know. All I
know is I’m a-goin’ Outside.”
“Outside?” The voice of the old woman was low. “I’ve got some
girls—Outside, somewhar. Ye mustn’t say they wasn’t my children, for
they was. They nuvver only had no chancet.”
“I know that,” said David Joslin. “That’s why I’m a-goin’ out. I’m
a-goin’ to try some time, somehow, to make a school, er a church, er
something, in these hills. We’ve got to learn how to read an’ write.
I’ve got a callin’ that that’s what we’d orter do. I never seen ye
before—maybe I never will again—but listen now. Some time, if I ever
build a school, I’m a-goin’ to build another one right in here.” His
eyes were streaming tears.
“I’ll tell ye the place,” said she eagerly. “Down below, about hafe a
mile, thar’s a place whar two stones come together—great big ones.
Thar’s a level floor under that, wider’n the floor of this here place,
an’ it’s covered in from the rain. Thar’s leaves thar—ye could fetch
in pine needles a-plenty if ye wanted to, fer thar’s pine about. Rain
or shine ye could hold school down thar. Hit would be sich a purty
place.”
“Good luck, stranger,” said she. “Ye may be crazy—I reckon ye air—but
God knows thar orter be more crazy people like that in these hills.”
Her guest turned and followed on down the winding stream in the muddy
pathway. A quarter or a half-mile below, he paused and looked across
the vine-covered remnant of what once had been a rail fence. He had
heard a rustling in the corn, and saw now the figure of a young woman
who stood looking at him; at her side, clinging to her tattered skirt,
a young child, perhaps four or five years old. This child had in her
little apron a store of nuts, gathered in the wood beyond. Her mother
carried half an armful of ears of corn.
“Howdy,” called David Joslin across the fence, in customary salutation
of the hills.
“Howdy,” she replied, but still stood motionless.
“Won’t ye come up a little closeter?” he resumed. “Yore mammy up
yander——”
The young woman slowly advanced, the child clinging still to her
skirt. She was a wild-looking creature, but quite comely, with a sort
of Indian cast to her features, her skin dark, whether with sun or with
other blood none might tell. Her eyes were black as night, and her
figure lean and slender, not quite so angular as that of the average
mountain woman. Young enough she was, and goodly enough she might have
been if ever she “had had her chance.”
The child at her skirt, an elfin youngster, had much of her mother’s
darkness of hair and eyes, her mother’s wide mouth of white, even
teeth, a thing unusual thereabouts. She now stood staring straight at
the stranger, motionless and silent.
“Ye’re Min, I reckon,” began David Joslin. “Yore mammy—she told me
to find ye an’ tell ye to go on home now, that it’s nearly time fer
breakfast.”
“Who air ye, stranger?” asked the young woman. “Which way ye bound?”
“My name is David Joslin,” he replied. “I live, or useter live, over on
the Bull Skin, near the mouth of Coal Creek.”
“What’s yore business? Air ye lookin’ fer logs?”
“No, I hain’t. I’m a-goin’ Outside.”
She stood staring at him, uncertain, silent, awkward. David Joslin
returned her gaze with his own frank, gray eyes. “Ye’ve lived jest the
way ye could,” said he. “Ye needn’t tell me nothin’. I know about the
raftsmen. I’ve been a raftsman myself. I’ve been Outside many times. I
run down the other fork, don’t ye see? I’m yore own sort of people. I
hain’t no better’n ye, God knows.
“I’ve got to be goin’ now,” he added. “I hope to see ye agin some time
in here. I’m jest a-goin’ Outside fer a little while, ontel I can learn
to read an’ write.”
“I reckon ye don’t know all about us—my mammy and me,” she began,
a slow flush now upon her face. This was a different sort of man—a
preacher, perhaps?
“Oh, yes, I do. I know all I need to know or want to know. I know ye
nuvver had no chancet.”
“I’ll say good-by now,” he added, extending a hand, which wandered to
the tangled crown of the little girl.
And so he turned and left her standing there, the child at her side,
the wild forage of the mountains to be their sustenance no one might
say yet how long. When the raftsmen came——