|AT SUNRISE the following morning, a man riding a lean bay horse came
down the mountain road toward the mill. His left hand was deformed, as
though from infancy. The fingers doubled in against the wrist. He held
the bridle rein, tied in a knot, over the crook of his arm. He was a big
man and he sat in the saddle as though more accustomed to that seat than
to any other. The horse traveled in a running walk. He turned into
the little valley and approached the mill. The miller was feeding her
chickens in the road before the door, throwing out handfuls of yellow
corn. The man called to her before the horse stopped.
“Have you got enough of that corn for a horse-feed, Sally?”
The woman turned, scattering the chickens.
“Bless my life,” she said, “it's the doctor. Where you been?”
“Up there,” he replied, jerking his deformed arm toward the summit of
the mountain where lay the bit of farm, marked by the gigantic trees.
“Is ole Nicholas sick?” said the woman. “He ain't sick now,” replied the
doctor. “You cured h'm, did you?”
“No, I didn't cure him,” said the doctor, getting down from his horse;
“they were dyin' in Hickory Mountain before I come into it, an' they'll
keep on a-dyin' after I've gone out.”
He lifted his leather saddlebags down from the horse and carried it
across to the mill porch.
The woman remained standing in the road, her closed hand full of corn,
the yellow grains showing between her fingers.
“You arn't tellin' me ole Nicholas is dead!”
“Yes, he's dead,” said the doctor. “New get me a gallon of corn; that
horse ain't had a bite to eat since yesterday evening.”
He went across the road, picked up a box, knocked the dust out of it
and brought it over by the mill porch. Then he took the bit out of
the horse's mouth, and put the bridle rein over the saddle, under the
stirrup leather.
“Ole Nicholas dead!” the woman repeated. “Well! Upon my word!”
“Why shouldn't he be dead?” said the doctor. “Every damn thing's got to
die.”
“What killed him?” inquired the woman.
“I don't know what killed him,” replied the doctor. “He was stretched
out on the floor when I got there.”
“Did he die just like anybody else?” said the woman.
“No,” answered the doctor, “he didn't die like anybody that I ever saw.
Will you get me that corn?”
The woman went into the mill and presently came out with the toll
measure full of corn. She poured it into the box. Then she sat down
on the porch beside the doctor, and began to roll the end of her apron
between her fat fingers.
“When did ole Nicholas take down?” she began.
“I don't know that,” said the doctor. “Jonas Black was crossing the
mountain about noon, an' old Nicholas called to him and told him to tell
me to come and see him. I went up last night.”
“It's a wonder you went,” said the miller. “Ole Nicholas wouldn't pay
you, would he?”
“If he didn't pay me, I wouldn't go,” replied the doctor, “you can
depend on that. I've quit bringin' 'em in or seein' 'em out unless I get
the cash in my hand.”
“I didn't think he had any money. He was always buyin' wild lands of the
State.”
“I don't know how much money he had,” replied the doctor, “but I do know
that it was always there on the table for me when I went. If it hadn't
a-been, I wouldn't have darkened his door.”
“Did he die hard?” said the woman. “Everybody dies hard,” replied the
doctor.
“Did he want to go?”
“None of us want to go.”
“How long did he live after you got there?”
“He lived until daylight.”
“You must have had a bad night of it.”
“It was awful!”
“It must a-been terrible if you thought so. You are used to seein'
people die.”
“I'm not used to seein' them die like old Nicholas died,” replied the
doctor. “He must a-been in powerful pain.”
“It wasn't so much pain. I could stop the pain.”
“Was he out of his head then?”
“I don't know.”
“Couldn't you tell by the way he talked?”
“He didn't talk.”
“Did he see things?”
“I don't know what he saw.”
“What was it that made his dyin' so awful?”
“It was _fear_,” replied the doctor,
“That he'd be lost?”
“No,” said the doctor, “that he'd die before he could tell me something
that he was tryin' to tell me.”
“Goodness! Was he tryin' to tell you somethin' all night?”
“All night,” said the doctor.
The woman sat for a moment in silence, her fat hands clasped together in
her lap, the muscles of her face tense, her eyes fixed on the mountain,
then she spoke. “Did he ever tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Was it somethin' he'd done?”
“N,” replied the doctor, “it was not anything he'd done.”
“What was it?”
“I did not understand it,” replied the doctor.
The woman rose.
“Good Lord!” she said, “a man on his deathbed a-trying all night to tell
you somethin' an' then you didn't understand it!”
“No, I didn't understand it,” said the doctor. “He kept
whisperin'--'He's comin,' he's comin'. He's to have my things,' an' I
kept askin' him if he meant some of his kin folks, but he always shook
his head. I never saw a man in such mortal agony to speak. Finally just
before he died, he got it out. He said, 'The Teacher.' Now, what did he
mean?”
“I know who he meant,” replied the woman, “he meant the School-teacher.”
“What School-teacher?”
“Why, the new School-teacher, the one that come last night. He was goin'
to stay with Nicholas.”
The horse had now finished with his breakfast, the doctor got up.
“I didn't know you had a Schoolteacher,” he said.
He went over to the horse, put the bit into its mouth, took up his
leather saddle-hags and thrust his foot into the stirrup.
“See here, Sally,” he said, “old Nicholas wanted me to get up at his
funeral and say that he had left everything to the 'Teacher.' I suppose
he meant this new School-teacher. I told him I'd see to it. Now, I don't
want to come back here; couldn't you do it? The country will likely
gather up and bury him this afternoon.”
He swung up into the saddle and hooked the bridle rein over his crooked
arm.
“Yes, I'll do that,” said the woman. The doctor clucked to his horse,
and disappeared down the little valley; his arm rising and falling with
the regular motion of the swinging walk.
The woman remained standing in the road, her hands spread out on her
hips. She had suddenly remembered that the guest of last night had said
that Nicholas Parks was going away!
At noon the miller and her little girl set out up the mountain.
They did not go by the road that wound tortuously through the forest to
the summit. They followed a path that ascended more directly, crossing
the road now and then, and climbing up steep ascents to the top, where
it ended in the road running along the high ridge, through the little
mountain farm.
The farm was inclosed on either side by a rail fence. Below it was a
cornfield of several acres, above a bit of fertile meadow, in which, on
the very ridge, stood two gigantic trees lifting their branches eighty
feet into the sky.
A dozen paces of beautiful green turf lying between the great
shellbarks.
Farther out stood a log house with a clapboard roof and a chimney built
halfway up with stone and finished with crossed sticks, daubed with
yellow clay. Behind it was a garden inclosed with palings split out of
long cuts of hickory timber. Midway between the garden and the house,
opposite the door, was a whitewashed well curb. From a long pole,
suspended in a forked tree on a round locust pin, hung a sapling
fastened to a bucket. Everything about the little farm was well kept.
The chimney and the palings were whitewashed, the fence was well laid
up, the bit of land was clean. Midway in the meadow, a path entered
through wooden bars and ran along inside the rail fence to the house.
There was a little crowd of some half dozen men standing about these
bars, when the woman and child came up.
The woman stopped in the road.
“What are you all standin' around for?” she said.
The men did not immediately reply. Finally one of them answered.
“We're waitin' for the preacher to come.”
The woman looked at the apparently vacant house. The door open. The sun
lying on the threshold.
“There's a-plenty to do, till he gits here,” she said. “Somebody's got
to dig a grave, an' somebody's got to make a coffin.”
The man leaning against the bar post, who had spoken for the others, now
jerked his head toward the meadow'.
“It's dug,” he said.
The woman looked in the direction he indicated; a pile of fresh earth
lay heaped up in the meadow', not between the two trees, but below'
them, some paces from the summit.
“Well,” said the woman, “you didn't pick out the place I'd a picked; I'd
a put it on the ridge between them two trees, that's the natural place
for it, there couldn't be no grander place. Who did you think you was
savin' that place for? It looks like you was puttin' ole Nicholas so
he'd be at the foot of somebody else that you was a-goin' to bury.”
“We didn't pick the place,” said the man.
“Who done it?”
“We don't know who done it, the grave was dug when we got here.”
The conversation was interrupted by the little girl.
“There comes the preacher,” she said.
The woman turned and looked down the road in the direction from which
she had just come.