IN HIDING
“It’s only a little way farther now, dear. I’m sure it’s only a little
way.”
“A little way to where, please ma’am?” Azalea gasped the question. She
was spent with hard climbing, and her heart pounded in her side. The
steep path before her was dark and rough. There was only the stars and a
small crescent moon to give them light.
“I wouldn’t dare to carry a lantern—not to-night,” Ma McBirney had
explained. “We’ll have to find our way in the dark this time.”
It seemed to Azalea that it was hours since they began “finding their
way.” They had slipped out of the back door of the cabin when the people
were at their supper, had crouched and crept along the path past the
spring house and taken a trail that ran up to the pine grove. From there
on they had been winding this way and that, always climbing and climbing
till the pain in the girl’s side was almost more than she could stand.
Ma McBirney seemed about ready to drop too. Azalea could hear her breath
coming almost in sobs. Yet she pushed on, and when Azalea begged her to
rest she would only say: “In a little while, my dear. In just a little
while.”
It began to thunder far off, and sheets of lightning threw a strange
pinkish glow over their path now and then.
“Don’t you worry none about that there lightning,” Ma McBirney said to
the girl whose hand she held so tight in her own that it hurt. “It will
swing off around the mountain, like as not. Anyway we’ll be there before
it comes.”
“Where, please ma’am?” asked Azalea again. And again Ma McBirney did not
answer, but pressed on along the path.
She seemed now to be walking on the very rim of a great bench, and Azalea
couldn’t help feeling that if the people were looking for them, they
could see them standing out against the sky when the lightning flashed
over the mountain. Perhaps Ma McBirney feared the same thing. At any
rate, she stooped over almost double as she walked. She could not hold
Azalea’s hand as they crept along this narrow path, but she told the
little girl to hold tight to her skirt. So they went on in the rising of
the wind, their way lightened by the increasing flashes of lightning.
Fortunately, though, they were walking on ground that was almost level,
and it gave their pounding hearts a chance to quiet a little.
Then, suddenly, Azalea saw looming up before her a great mass of rock.
“Here we are!” cried Mrs. McBirney. She began feeling around in the
dark, and then, a great flash of lightning showed something on the rock
that was blacker than either the night or the stone.
“Here it is!” she cried. “Here’s the way in!” And the girl, still
holding onto that motherly skirt, crept after Mary McBirney through an
opening in the rock, down three rude stairs, along a dark, damp place and
through another narrower opening. Ma McBirney struck a match and lit a
little lantern.
“Well,” she said. “Here we are!”
Azalea looked about her. Their feet rested on bare earth, and on every
side of them arose stone walls. From them hung queer, mouse-like
creatures and horrid spiders and long beetles. Two benches of stone ran
along the side, and a sort of fireplace had been made of broken pieces of
rock, above which a little crack in the roof served as chimney.
“We ain’t the first that has hid here,” said Mrs. McBirney looking
around. “And likely we won’t be the last. No one but mountain folk
knows about this place, and they ain’t telling. Make yourself to home
Azalea, for this is where we’re going to stay till them friends of yours
is tired of looking for us.”
Azalea drew up nearer to the woman and hid her face against her bosom.
“Why, what’s the matter, you little poor thing?” cried Mrs. McBirney.
“You’re not minding a few little bats and spiders, be you? I’ll get them
out in no time.”
“No, no!” almost shrieked the girl. “Don’t touch them, please! They’ll
fall down on us!”
“Why, what’s this I hear?” demanded ma. “A girl that’s been plumb up
against all kinds of trouble, getting scared at a few little beasties!
You ain’t seeming no ways brave to me.”
“But thousands of yellow spiders, ma’am! And hundreds of bats! All
above our heads, too. I hate it! I just hate it.”
“If it wasn’t for the storm, dear, we’d lie on the ground outside,” said
Mrs. McBirney. “But there, there! It’s come, you see. We’ve got to
stay here.”
As she spoke the wild downpour of the rain could be heard, sweeping along
over the mountain, and the next instant it was roaring about them. They
could feel the spray of it dashing in from the outer chamber and here and
there through crevices in the rock above them. They seemed terribly
alone there on that mountain top in their resounding cavern, and Ma
McBirney was not surprised that the girl who had gone through such
fearful experiences that day should throw herself into her arms and weep.
Mary McBirney held her close and soothed her with soft pattings and
caresses. She couldn’t make her voice heard above the storm, but she
knew there were other things besides words with which she could comfort
the poor child. They were both very tired. Their limbs trembled from
the long, hard climb and from the dread of the storm, and when Ma
McBirney spread her great circular cape on the ground they were glad
enough to lie down on it. They covered themselves with it too—even their
heads, and after a little while, with the storm still bellowing without,
they fell asleep.
Jim and his father heard the uproar and turned in their beds and
shivered. In fact, Jim couldn’t stand it in bed alone, but crept into
his father’s room.
“You reckon ma’s hid somewhere out of this?” Jim asked.
“Sure!” cried pa, drawing Jim into bed beside him. “Sure she is. Her
and that there girl is as dry as a bone somewhere, sitting laughing at
all this fuss of rain.” But when Jim had fallen asleep, soothed by these
words, Pa McBirney got up and walked the floor until morning. Then he
cooked Jim’s breakfast and his own, and packed a basket with food.
“We-all will be taking a little stroll,” he said. “Just hand me down my
rifle, sonny. Maybe we might see something we’d like for dinner on the
way.”
He went out of the back door, bidding Jim keep close beside him, and
looked around for quite a while before starting on the up trail; and then
he kept away from the wood trail and took the one that led up the face of
the rocks—one which no one but a mountaineer could find or follow. His
footsteps appeared on the freshly-washed earth only as far as the spring.
From there on, there was no trace of him and his boy, and anyone who came
looking for them would indeed have hard work to follow.
“There was talk of them show folks setting up the merry-go-round and all
the rest of the contraptions down there at Lee to-day,” said pa. “I only
hope they’ll do it and not go turning their attention to things that
don’t concern them.”
Once or twice as Jim and his father came out upon some rocky ledge of the
mountain the boy peered down into the valley to see if he could catch
sight of tents or wagons, but all below them was wrapped in a wonderful
lilac mist. And anyway, he had not much time to give to these matters.
He was thinking of where his mother would be found, and wondering how it
was that his father kept such a sure course. Not an idea of where his
mother could be entered the boy’s head, but he knew there were secret
hiding places on the mountains, of which children were not told, and he
was right in thinking that his mother had gone to one of these.
After a long time he said:
“Where you heading for, pa?”
“Well,” said pa, “your ma thought best not to tell me where she was
going. She wanted me to speak up truthful and say I didn’t know her
whereabouts. But it wouldn’t take many guesses for me to locate her in
Conscript Den.”
“What’s that?” asked Jim, staring at his father with open eyes and mouth.
“Well, that’s a place that all the old folks about here knows of very
well. It’s been used by a good many one time and another, but the first
time I know of its being used was when old Colonel Atherton tried to
conscript a lot of young men down there in Lee, to force ’em to join the
Southern army in 1862. Some of these here men was for the Union and they
didn’t take to the idea of fighting with the South. Anyway, I don’t
think they was much interested either way. They just wanted to be left
alone to work their little farms and be let mind their own business. But
they didn’t believe in slavery. It wasn’t in ’em to do that. They was
liberty loving people, and if anything, a little too independent in their
ways for their own good, maybe.”
“Think so?” said Jim. He had his own ideas about independence.
“So twenty young men that was conscripted run up here and hid, and
slipped down the mountain nights and got food; and they picked berries
and stoned rabbits and I don’t know what all. But even so they didn’t
have much and they was almost skin and bone when the searchin’ party
found them.”
“And when they found ’em, what did they do?”
Pa seemed not to have heard and walked on even faster than he had been
walking, which was quite unnecessary, for though Jim could run along like
a squirrel, he was almost out of breath trying to keep up with his
father. Now, however, he made a dash and caught at his father’s
suspender.
“And what did they do with ’em dad?”
“They took ’em down to Lee, Jim, and stood ’em up in the public
square—them twenty young chaps, some of ’em not more than eighteen—and
their old neighbors faced up there in double file and shot ’em down.”
“What!” cried Jim.
“Had to, boy. _Had to_! Military law. The old colonel made ’em.”
“Oh!”
“But that finished him. He lived down there in that big shut-up place
they call The Shoals. You know it. It ain’t been opened in your day,
but it’s a grand old house. Well, after the old colonel had made the
people do the thing I told you about, the countryside was up and buzzing
like a nest of hornets, and old colonel, he had to black his face and put
on women’s clothes and hike out. And his wife went back to Alabama where
she come from, and nobody heard of the Athertons any more.”
“And are there any folks living at Lee now that did the shooting?”
Pa McBirney stopped to get his breath, and he looked about him at the
lovely day, at the shining woods and the down-plunging stream. Then he
dropped on a convenient rock and motioned Jim to sit beside him.
“I’m a-going to tell you something, Jim,” he said, “that I want you to
remember. Us mountain folks has got a bad name in some ways. Folks say
we’re shiftless—some of us—and revengeful. But do you know what the
people down at Lee done after old Colonel Atherton was run out? They got
together and they took an oath never, no matter what come, to carry on
the story of that dreadful thing. They said they wouldn’t speak of it
nor hand it on to their children, nor wage war nor nurse hard feelings.
So who done the shooting and who was shot is something I don’t know and
don’t want to know. My father knew, and what he knew turned him old
before his time. And I remember hearing about an older brother, and
never was I told about his end. So maybe your own uncle was one of them
poor martyrs. But it don’t matter now. It’s all healed up, like the
hole the fire burned in that there chestnut. It’s healed up in brotherly
love, and if you was to go to Lee and ask any questions about that there
rumpus, you’d get your trouble for your pains. They’d pretend they
didn’t know what you was talking about. And the young people, they don’t
know any more about it than just that it happened, and they’ve married
and intermarried, till them that was forced to be slayers and them that
was slain have their names passed on in the same family. And I’m proud
of it, Jim, and want you to know it, and to say to folks, when they hold
out that we’re a quarrelsome people, that we’re a forgiving people too.”
Jim didn’t answer. He sat close beside his father for a while, listening
to the gentle sounds of the forest and the falling water. And then the
two got up and went on.
At length, amid a fine grove of chestnuts, Jim beheld the same pile of
rocks that had loomed up before the tired eyes of Azalea the night
before, and he followed his father around into a cranny of them and saw
the same doorway she had seen.
“Mary,” called pa softly. “Mary! Be you there!”
For a moment there was no answer, and then, as he called again, a
frightened voice replied:
“Is it you, Tom? Have you got a light? My, it’s dark here, and we’ve
been sleeping till now.”
Jim could hardly keep from whooping with delight, and the next moment he
and his father had crept through the first half-open chamber, into the
dark inner one, where ma and Azalea sat up on the big coat, rubbing their
eyes and blinking at the light from the lantern which ma had blown out as
they lay down to rest the night before, and which pa had just relighted.
Jim never forgot the strange look of everything—of the cave with its
rough walls, of the bats and spiders and beetles, of his mother, sitting
there on the ground, all bewildered and strange-looking, and of the girl
who clung to her and shuddered.
“Get out of here! Get out of here!” called Pa McBirney cheerily. “It’s
a fine day outside.” And he helped his wife and Azalea to their feet and
led them outside.
“Best not build a fire,” he said. “We’ll have to lie low a day or two
till them show folks get out of the way. I cooked the bacon before I
come, and I brought the coffee in a pail. It was hot when I started, but
I reckon it’s cold enough now. But here’s plenty of biscuit, and a jar
of gooseberry jam, and some of them star cookies and some hard-boiled
eggs and a few radishes and some cold potatoes—”
“My goodness, Thomas!” cried his wife. “Did you think we had turned into
wolves because we was living in a den?”
“Well you see, Mary, this here will have to last you all of to-day and
perhaps a part of to-morrow. There’s no telling just what will happen.
I might be penned up down there, with men watching me, and then you’d
want a little stock of stuff laid by.”
Jim had moved over toward Azalea, and now the two stood side by side
staring at the older people. Pa might be penned up, and ma, who was
hiding in a den, might go hungry! Did such things really happen? Jim
turned and gazed at the girl, and he couldn’t help thinking how pretty
she was, with her oval face and her great gray eyes and her long braids
of brown hair. She looked as if she could run as well as a boy and ride
a horse as well, or maybe better. Suddenly an idea came to him.
“Say!” he burst out. “You’re glad you’re with us, ain’t you? You don’t
wish you’d gone on with them other folks?”
“Glad!” said the girl. “Of course I’m glad. I never want to see them
again—never, never!” Her gray eyes turned almost black, and she
straightened her thin little figure till, in Jim’s words, she was like a
ramrod.
“Peter!” thought Jim. “I wouldn’t like to get her mad at me.” She
wouldn’t be a good one to tease, Jim made up his mind. Jim saw that his
mother was watching the girl, too, and he knew how his mother hated
anything like bad temper and he wondered if she would like Azalea as well
when she saw that she could be “peppery.” But all she said was:
“Azalea, I know a place where there’s a spring of water. Pa’s brought us
a towel and some soap and a comb. We’ll go down to the spring and make
ready for breakfast.” So the two went off together, and Jim and his
father spread the breakfast out on a sort of table-rock.
Then they sat down to their breakfast, and whether it was the strangeness
of the night and the wildness of the place and the beauty of the morning,
or whether it was fun in its way, being outlaws and in hiding, who can
say? But as the meal went on they began to laugh and talk as they seldom
did even when there was company; and Azalea couldn’t keep from laughing
either. There was something hushed and sad about her face, and when she
spoke, her voice had a break in it, for her terrible sorrow lay heavily
upon her heart. Yet, as she had said to Ma McBirney the night before,
she had known for a long time that her mother could not live, and she had
thought how, after her mother was gone, she herself must go on, taking
the rough treatment the show men had given her, and riding bareback on
those poor thin horses, and doing tricks for people who called out
horrible things to her. Now she felt safe, and even there in that wild
place, more at home perhaps than she ever had felt before in her life.
After a time Jim and his father went away, but not before they had gone
in the cave and killed or driven out every creature in it. They made a
sort of broom right on the spot before Azalea’s astonished eyes, and
brushed the place and cleaned it; and pa pried back a big stone on top
and let the sunlight in. And then he asked ma how she was going to put
in her time.
“Just sitting still,” said ma.
“I never saw you sit still yet, Mary,” said pa. “I don’t believe you can
do it.”
“Yes I can, Thomas. Don’t you worry. I can sit and sit and I’m going
to. It’s years since I’ve had a quiet spell and it looks like this was
my time to take it.”
“Seeing’s believing,” said pa. And laughing and telling ma not to worry
about anything, he and Jim turned down the trail.
“Let’s get nearer the waterfall,” said ma to Azalea. So they went to a
place where a great flat rock ran out into the mountain stream, and here
they sat with the water tossing and leaping past them and hurling itself
over the side of the mountain. Ma lay down and put her hands under her
head and looked straight up through the branches of an overhanging beech,
into the soft blue sky. And Azalea pillowed her head on her arm and lay
there too. A long time passed and neither spoke. It was enough to
listen to the voices of the mountain, to watch the sailing of the clouds
and the winging of the birds. But after a time ma reached out and
touched Azalea gently.
“Little girl,” she said, “little daughter!”
“Ma’am?”
“I’ve been a-thinking and a-thinking, and it seems to me it’s a queer
world.”
“Yes’m, it is,” said Azalea as if she too had settled that fact in her
mind.
“Some things that seem wrong is right, and some that everybody—or almost
everybody—says is right, is really, when you come down to it, plumb
wrong.”
“I reckon that’s so, ma’am.”
“Now, me taking you in the way I did—grabbing you away from the folks
you’d known and been with—that might look wrong. But it ain’t, Azalea,
it ain’t! You want to know how I know it ain’t wrong?”
“If you please, ma’am.”
“Well, first of all I reasoned it out. You was better in a house than on
the road. You was better living where you could go to school than where
you’d slave for people who’d give you no education. You was better with
people who’d take you to church and read the Scriptures to you than with
people who’d swear and curse and drink and gamble. And most of all, you
was better with them that would love and cherish you than with them that
would just use you, and perhaps bring you to some harm and turn you off
when they got through with you.”
“Oh, yes’m! I know, ma’am. I’m thankful—”
“I don’t want you bothering to be thankful, Azalea. I just want you to
be loving. But I haven’t said what I wanted to say. It ain’t reason
that tells me I’ve done right. It’s something else.”
There was a little pause, and then she went on:
“It’s something I wouldn’t like to speak of to everyone, Azalea. But you
see, you’re going to take Molly’s place with me, and I’m going to begin
right away treating you as if you was her.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Well, now this thing—its like a little bird singing in my heart. Ever
since I was a little girl, times would come when that little bird would
begin singing. Maybe ’twould be a pretty day and me down washing clothes
at the spring; maybe ’twould be something preacher said in church; maybe
’twould be Jimmy shouting and hollering out in the woods, or his pa
coming up the trail and letting out a yell to tell me he was on the way.
But when the bird sang best, dear, was when I’d done something that I
knew I ought to do and that it was hard to do. Now it was hard for me to
take you away from those folks, for I don’t like to run counter to no
one. I like friends and I hate foes, and I had to make foes of them
people. But they wouldn’t listen to what was right and reasonable, and I
had to do the way I done. But all last night when we was climbing the
trail in the dark, and when the storm got us, and when we lay in that
filthy den, and most of all this morning when I woke up and found you
there beside me, the bird was singing in my heart. It sings sweeter than
any of these here birds round about, though they sing sweet enough,
goodness knows. But it’s just as if something new was come into the
world—it’s just as it was the day Jimmy was born and lay on my arm and I
knew I had a little son of my own. Why, it’s just the way it was the day
I found I had a Saviour, and learned that the love of my Heavenly Father
was round about me, and that I could walk in it and fear nothing. Did
you ever feel like that, Azalea?”
The girl turned her great eyes on her. “No’m, I don’t think I ever did.”
“Well, you will, Azalea, you will! I’m going to tell you all about that.
I’m going to tell you every good thing I know. And you must tell me all
you know, too, for I’m an unschooled woman, who’s worked hard and not
seen much. But anyway, even for me, I can see that life has trails that
lead up the mountain. Don’t you like to be here on the mountain top,
child?”
“Oh, I do, ma’am. I think it’s the most beautiful place I ever did see!”
“Well, and I was studying about your poor ma. Just think, to-day
whatever there is to know over beyond life, she’s knowing. She was
brave, wasn’t she, and kind?”
“Yes’m, Oh, yes’m—good to folks and animals and everything.”
“And it will be counted to her. It’s just got to be. She’s happy and
safe to-day; but maybe she wouldn’t have been happy if she couldn’t have
known you was safe, too, Azalea.”
“Do you think she knows, ma’am?”
“I think she knows! I can’t sit here on this mountain top and see them
birds winging along and hear the wind blowing and the water singing and
have the little bird singing away in my heart and not think she knows.
Someway, it’s like two and two. When you add them they make four. I
can’t explain what I mean, but I’m trusting, Azalea, and I’m happy.”
Her thin face shone with a beautiful light, and the eyes she turned on
Azalea were full of lovely tears. The girl crept a little closer to her
on the broad rock. The long day passed in silence, to the humming of
bees, to the shifting of shadows, to the call of birds. They watched the
sun set and the stars rise. They felt the dew fall on their hands, and
saw the blackness drop like soft veils. Again they crept into their den,
this time quite without fear, and slept in each other’s arms.