HAYSTACK THOMPSON
Haystack Thompson lay in bed making uncomplimentary remarks about the
rain.
“It’s just took away the last chanct we had of following up that poor
little mountain lass,” said he to his old clock. “If it hadn’t been for
this tarnation storm I’d ’a’ tramped back to that there dell where I come
on them two lasses making eyes at that rattler, and it would have been
mighty funny if I couldn’t have found out something about what happened
there.”
He reached out for his bag of tobacco, and filling his pipe and lighting
it, tried to bring some cheer into his damp cabin by smoking very hard.
“I’d have gone over the whole ground,” he mused. “I’d ’a’ pretended I
was walking on with that nice little Miss Carin, talking and smiling; I’d
thought out how the other lass hung behind, looking at the trees and
flowers, and I’d never have give up till I made out why she didn’t reach
that church. But here we are, everything swept smooth as sandpaper with
the storm!”
He fell to wishing that for once in his life there was some one to build
the fire for him and get the breakfast.
“It’s lonesome business,” said he aloud, “being pa and ma and all the
children just by yourself. Looks hoggish, now, don’t it? I wish I’d
divided up and just been the man of the house, and let some other folks
take the rest of the parts. I’m a no-count old fool, anyhow. No one but
a plumb idiot would ’a’ let that there girl be snatched away like that
yesterday. A blamed, sapless old fool, that’s what I be! Me with
nothing but a fiddle to give me an excuse for living! For my farming
would make you sick to look at. The neighbors snigger when they see it.
Well, what do you think of that now, for a man to reach my age and have
nothing but a fiddle that he cares for!”
He flung out of bed in disgust, whipped into his old clothes, lighted the
fire—which proceeded to smoke badly—and got out his bacon and his bag of
meal.
“I’m just plumb tired of cooking alone,” he announced to a squirrel that
paused for a moment before his door, sitting erect on his haunches and
casting a wistful glance from his bright eyes. Haystack tossed him some
ground nuts which he kept in a bag for that purpose, and then turned
angrily to his own meal. Halfway through it, he laid down his knife and
fork, and a light broke over his face.
“I know what I’ll do,” he said, “I’ll go find that little lass. I’ll
make myself of some use, that’s what I’ll do. See here, Betsy,” he went
on, turning to his violin and speaking to it as if it were a little
sister, “you and me’ll start out and find that there poor lass, you hear?
We’ve been playing stick-in-the-mud about long enough. What we need is
to get a move on us and to go out and see something of the world. What
you say, Bet?”
Just then a log fell on the hearth, and from Betsy’s answering strings
came forth a delicate wail. Haystack took it to mean that they should
go, and when he had made his cabin tidy—and he took much more pains with
it than usual—he put on clean homespun, packed a change of clothing in a
square of blue denim, fastened this to a stick which he threw over his
shoulder, and taking Betsy under the other arm, started out on a quest.
At about the same time the sheriff at Lee and Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson
and Elder Mills and Mr. Pickett and a great many other persons were
bestirring themselves to the same end. They telegraphed here and they
telephoned there, and all over the county the good neighbors were keeping
an outlook. Ma McBirney and Mrs. Carson kept together and talked over
this and that phase of the matter, and both of them poured out their kind
hearts in good wishes, as if their love would build a wall around the
lost child to keep her from harm.
“Let no evil touch her, dear Lord,” prayed Mary McBirney over and over
again. “Thy power is everywhere, and Thy love is all protecting. Spread
Thy love about her like a cloak and keep her from harm.”
And that was just about the time that Azalea, aroused from her thin and
worried sleep by the first streaks of the dawn that streamed to her over
the level low country, drew the dirty bedclothes closer about her chin,
and tried to make out whether or not it was all a bad dream. Tige, the
bulldog, crouching there at the tent door, and snarling if she but moved,
certainly seemed like a nightmare. Betty Bowen with her frowsy head and
her horrid red flannel bed-gown, sleeping with her mouth open on the
shake-down next to Azalea, and the miserable old show wagon outside, with
lumbering Rafe Bowen, the son of Betty, snoring in rivalry to the
robins—not that his opera in any way resembled theirs—was something worse
than ordinary nightmare.
“It isn’t a dream,” sighed Azalea, with deep, terrible conviction. “It’s
true.”
She went over the sharp little drama of all that had happened the day
before; remembered the sweet hollow in the woods where she and Carin had
gone, the fright they had had at the snake, the appearance of that queer,
kind old Haystack Thompson; she remembered how she had followed them a
little way, and then had stopped for some wake robins which were growing
in a sunny little spot and which she had thought would look lovely at Ma
McBirneys’ belt; and then had come the strange whimpering of an animal in
pain. She had thought it a dog caught in a rabbit trap, and she had gone
toward it, and as she went on, the sound seemed to move too, and it grew
more agonizing as if the animal were being tortured beyond anything it
could stand. And then, suddenly, from among the great trees, had come
Sisson, the “showman,” her old enemy. He had his huge hand over her
mouth in a minute, and had pushed her before him, making her run against
her will, and presently they were among all the old companions of her
wandering years. Rafe Bowen, who had run away three years before, was
back too. He was a big fellow with broad shoulders and a sullen face.
And there was a new woman—to take her mother’s place, Azalea thought.
They had laughed at her and told Sisson not to be too rough with her.
“You treat her like she was a mad steer, Hank,” Betty Bowen had said.
“Don’t scare the young un like that.”
Sisson let go of her and pushing her a little way from him broke into a
roar of laughter. It made cold chills run over the girl. She knew that
when Sisson laughed it was when some one else was in trouble. Nearly the
only thing he really enjoyed was tormenting some one.
“She ran out to meet me,” he cried, roaring with that cruel laughter, his
eyes full of evil pleasure. “Just toddled out to meet me, she did. You
never saw anything like it. Couldn’t stay away from her old friend,
Zalie couldn’t. Once a show girl always a show girl, eh?”
Azalea had been learning lessons of self-control since she had been with
Mary McBirney, but now her old-time temper flamed up in her. She felt
the familiar wave of fire sweeping across her brain and she screamed out
angry things at Sisson.
“I’m no show girl!” she protested. “I never wanted to be a show girl. I
think you are wicked, wicked, Hank Sisson! You’ve taken me away from the
best people I ever knew and they’ll be so frightened! Oh, please, Mrs.
Bowen, make him let me go. Oh, Hank Sisson I hate you! I hate you! Oh,
why isn’t my mamma alive? You wouldn’t dare treat me like this if she
was alive. You bad, bad man!”
“You can see for yourself, what a fine performer she is,” Sisson sneered.
“High tragedy, that’s her line.”
“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” wailed the girl, “mamma was good to you. Won’t you
help me?”
“Turning on the tear taps now,” grinned Sisson.
“Oh, shut up,” snapped the new woman. “What did you expect the girl to
do? Didn’t think she’d rejoice, did you? Leave her be, you Sisson.
You’ve got her, that’s the main thing; now give her a chance to cool down
a little. I’m sorry for the young un, that’s what I am—taking her away
from a good home to tag along with a lot like us!”
Sisson raised his heavy fist and made as if to strike the woman.
“You take your choice,” he growled. “Shut up or be shut up.”
“While we’re rowing around here, Hank,” broke in Betty Bowen, “the folks
will be after us. Do we carry out our plan, or don’t we?”
“We carry it out and we do it quick,” announced Sisson. Nor was Azalea
long in finding out what the plan was. Taking it for granted that as
soon as Azalea was missed, the Sisson All Star Combination would be under
suspicion, it was the intention of Sisson and his troupe to go on up into
the mountains; but Betty Bowen and her son Rafe were to take the best
team of horses, and the wagon with its load of conveniences, hide by
night in the woods, and then make their way before dawn into South
Carolina. The state line was not more than twelve miles from where they
then were, and once across that, they were comparatively safe.
This program had been carried out rapidly—more rapidly, in fact, than was
at first intended. Azalea was compelled to go in the old covered wagon
and to lie down there under a pile of odds and ends. Betty sat beside
her son Rafe and directed their course. They had struck an old
wood-road, and wound along through the heart of a silent forest, meeting
no one. So much more solitary was the road than they had supposed it
would be that Betty urged her son to press on. The horses were young and
strong—a new team which Azalea had not before seen—and the result was
that by twelve o’clock that night they had camped in an out-of-the-way
grove across the line dividing the two Carolinas. The mountains were
left behind, and an almost level plain stretched around them. But the
underbrush in this grove of poor trees was thick, and as Betty intended
to do her cooking at night and to show no smoke from her camp fire to
curious strangers during the day, they felt that there was little danger
of their being found.
The rain that had drenched the valley of Lee had thrown out no more than
a light shower over the spot where the Bowens kept Azalea prisoner, and
while the girl lay on her rickety bed wondering what had happened back at
home, she did not dream of the wild experiences through which her friends
Jim and Hi had been passing. It was not of them that she thought
chiefly—though she knew how they would be fuming about her and putting
plans on foot for her recovery—but of Ma McBirney and her anxiety.
“I’m so used to having bad times,” thought the little girl wrapping her
arms tight about her body as if for company, “that I can stand them. But
Ma McBirney isn’t used to them. She’ll just fret herself crazy.”
She had perfect confidence in the ability of her friends to find her.
She had thought all that out in that strange, dangerous drive at night
through the old wood-road. People like Pa McBirney and Mr. Carson
weren’t the kind to give up hunting for her.
“I’ve just got to lie low,” thought this child who had seen too much of
the ways of a prowling company of folk, “and take care of myself the best
way I can, and I’ll be found. I’ll be back in Ma McBirney’s house all
right and tight in a little while. I’m going to believe that and say it
over and over. I’m not going to be scared, nor sorry, nor anything. Jim
and Hi will think I’m a silly thing to let myself be picked up and
carried away like that, anyway. They’ll think I haven’t a bit of grit.
But I’ll show them I’m not such a stupid goose after all.”
She made up her mind, too, that she would try not to think too much about
Ma McBirney. If she did she would get to crying again, and she didn’t
want to cry. She wanted to think, and to watch, and to be wise and act
at the right moment. And having reached that conclusion, she sat up in
bed with something almost like brightness on her face. And at that Tige,
the bulldog, sat up too and showed all of his teeth as he gave a low
growl. Tige was a good dog according to his lights; and his lights told
him that when his master, Rafe Bowen—according to Tige, the most
wonderful master in the world—told him to “watch,” why then, he was to
watch; nay he was to sleep with one eye open and both ears alert.
“For goodness sake, Tige,” whispered Azalea, leaning forward and putting
out her hand toward the dog, “be sensible, can’t you? I’ve got to move
sometimes, haven’t I?”
Betty Bowen threw her brown arms up over her frowsy head.
“Keep still, you, Zalie,” she snarled sleepily. “Don’t you see I’m dead
beat?”
So for two hours longer the restless girl had to lie still in her bed,
though it became almost an agony to do so, while the tired show woman
slept on and on. After a time, however, the little camp came to life.
Rafe got up and demanded breakfast. Betty straggled out, heavy-eyed and
slatternly, and set forth some cold food which Azalea could not swallow.
The horses were fed, the wagon greased, and all was got in readiness for
a hasty flight if necessary. Azalea helped as they directed her, and she
managed to find a chance to wash carefully as Ma McBirney had taught her,
and she combed her hair with a little side comb, and made herself look as
well as she could.
“You’ve got mighty fine ways since you’ve been living out,” remarked
Betty Bowen teasingly. Azalea looked at her as candidly as she would
have looked at Ma McBirney, for someway, in spite of all her anger, she
was feeling sorry for Bet Bowen this morning.
“Yes, Mrs. Bowen,” she said. “I have been taught some nice ways. Mrs.
McBirney is the neatest woman you ever saw. Of course my own mamma tried
to teach me things, but what was the use, when we didn’t have any way to
keep nice? You can’t keep clean and fresh on the road, can you?”
Betty looked at the girl in sullen surprise. She had not expected to be
met in this neighborly fashion. She thought to herself that if she were
being held a prisoner, no one could get her to “chirk up” like that.
“No, you bet you can’t,” she said in answer to the girl’s question. “Now
me, I used to wash my hair and brush it, and keep my hands pretty. I
wasn’t always a battered old ship of the desert like I be now.” Bet
could be rather picturesque in her speech when she had a mind. “Fact is,
I reckon I had too much good looks and too little sense once on a time.
Both the sense and the looks have been knocked out of me now. I guess
you or anybody can see that.”
“Whatever made you take up with this show life, Mrs. Bowen?” the girl
asked. They were sitting together then on the ground, their little odd
tasks being all done. Azalea was playing idly with some pine needles,
braiding them together after a fashion she had, and weaving them into a
little mat. In the old days she would have sat idle, but Ma McBirney had
got her into the way of occupying herself with one thing and another.
“What made me take to it?” demanded Bet, turning her haggard eyes on her
companion, “Why, the same thing that made your mother take to it.”
There was something threatening and angry in the way she spoke, and
Azalea looked at her with fear in her eyes. She could feel her
heartbeats fairly strangling her, but she had the courage to seize at the
remark. Ever since she was old enough to think at all, she had been
puzzled and bewildered by the things about her. And now it seemed she
might be told something of all she wished to know.
“And why was that, Betty?” she asked softly. “Why did my mamma have to
wander around and act in a show?”
Mrs. Bowen drew an old rag of a shawl about her shoulders and leaned back
against a tree. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind whether to
tell this child the truth or not. But finally she gave a little nod.
“I’m just going to up and tell you why,” she said. “I think it’s coming
to you to know. She did it because she married a poor shiftless coot of
a man, the black sheep of a way-up family, and she done it against the
wishes of all her folks. She ran away from home with him, and she took
care of him while he lazed around and wouldn’t do nothing, and she looked
after him like he was the best man in the world, and stuck to him when he
gambled away all she earned. And then you was born, and she had to run
away from him to get money enough to care for you.”
“Oh,” gasped Azalea, her hand at her heart and a sick feeling stealing
over her.
“And I will say,” went on Bet, “that she cared for you as tender as if
you was respectable folks living in the finest house in town. She just
done the best she could; and she went along with us because we didn’t
object to having a baby in the troupe. We began training you like a
little puppy as soon as you had any mimicry in you, and the folks that
came to the show liked it. Her and you was drawing cards, I can tell
you. And for all of her broken heart she was nice and cheerful except
when we’d go to the towns near by where she used to live. Then she was
afraid she’d meet some of them that used to know her in the old days.
But at last, when she found she was going to die, she seemed glad we was
edging along toward her home.”
“And where was that,” breathed rather than asked Azalea. “Where was her
old home?”
“Law, child, don’t you know that? Why, her old home was at Lee. That’s
where your grandfather Atherton come from—from Lee.”
“My grandfather Atherton?”
“Sure, Zalie. Didn’t your ma tell you that? Well, she was a close one.
I don’t know as she told us all, either, but we got hold of the story one
way and another. When her father skipped out to parts unknown, owing to
some trouble he got into at the time of the war, his wife—she was his
second wife, and only a young thing—went back to her folks in Alabama for
a while. And then they was made so poor by the war that she took shame
to be dependent on them. So she came back to this part of the country,
somewhere, and taught school, and took care of her little girl. And that
little girl was your ma. She was a pretty little thing, made to live in
luxury, I allow. I suppose she sort of honed for grand ways and grand
clothes. Anyway, when your pa, Jack Knox, who come of an old family and
was handsome and taking in his ways, came along, she married him. She
didn’t know the drinking and the shiftlessness had come down to him as
well as the fine manners and the handsome face. I heard your grandmother
fought and fought against them two marrying, but they would have their
way. So that’s your story, missy, and I do think it was coming to you to
know it.”
Azalea stared into the woman’s face with wide-stretched eyes.
“Oh, thank you, thank you, Mrs. Bowen. I am glad to know; I do think I
had a right to be told. But just think, I was in that old house the
other day—that beautiful old house that belonged to my grandfather. ‘The
Shoals’ it is called. And it’s very, very queer, but I felt all the time
as if I had been in it before. But of course I never had. You can’t
inherit memories, can you Mrs. Bowen, the way you do the features of your
face, or—or habits?”
[Picture: “So that’s your story, missy.”]
But at that moment, Betty Bowen’s great hulk of a son came sauntering
back from what he called a “spying.”
“There ain’t nobody in sight so far as I can make out,” he announced
sullenly. “And now suppose you two quiet down a little. I want to
sleep.”
He whistled his dog to him and pointed with a big forefinger at Azalea.
“Watch, Tige,” he commanded. And he and the dog stretched themselves
side by side, the man to sleep, and the dog to keep guard.
Azalea felt a wave of trembling creeping over her, and she turned her
eyes once more to Bet.
“Oh, Mrs. Bowen,” she whispered, “what have I done that you should treat
me like this?”
But Mrs. Bowen lifted her finger in warning.
“Just keep still, Zalie,” she answered, also under her breath, “and you
won’t be hurt. Sisson’s a man that hits back when he’s hit. He was
all-fired mad at your being took from him and he swore he’d have you
back. He seemed to have to do it to keep up his pride. So now he’s got
you, and I’m to keep you, that’s all.”
“But how can you, Betty? How can you? I wouldn’t do anything mean to
you.”
Betty Bowen looked at her darkly.
“Sisson is kin of mine,” she said, as if that settled the question.
“There ain’t nobody else in the world for me to turn to as I know of.”
A lump came into Azalea’s throat as she looked at Betty. To think of
having no friend but Sisson! Something warm began to stir in Azalea’s
heart. She did not know that the name of it was pity.