LANCE'S LAUREL.
THE inheritance of Lance Cleaverage came to him from his
maternal grandfather. Jesse Lance had felt it bitterly when his
handsome high-spirited youngest daughter ran away with Kimbro
Cleaverage, teacher of a little mountain school, a gentle,
unworldly soul who would never get on in life. His small
namesake was four years old when Grandfather Lance, himself a
hawkfaced, up-headed man, undisputed master of his own
household, keen on the hunting trail, and ready as ever for a
fight or a frolic, came past and stopped at the Cleaverage farm
on the way from his home in the Far Cove neighborhood down to
the Settlement to buy mules, and, incidentally, to arrange about
his will. He was not advanced in years, and he was in excellent
health; but there were a number of married sons and daughters to
portion, he had a considerable amount of property, and his wife
was ailing. It had been suggested that both should make their
wills; so the documents, duly written out, signed and attested,
were being carried down to Jesse Lance's lawyer in Hepzibah. [105]
He had seen almost nothing of his one-time favorite, Melissa,
since the marriage twelve years before with Cleaverage that so
disappointed him; and he had not now expected to remain the
night in her house. But the little Lance, a small splinter of
manhood, at once caught his grandfather's eye. The child stirred
Jesse Lance's curiosity perhaps--or it may have been some deeper
feeling. The first collision between these two occurred as the
visitor, having dismounted, approached the Cleaverage gate. He
had his favorite hound with him, and four-year-old Lance,
leading forth old Speaker, his chosen comrade, observed the hair
rise on the neck of grandfather's follower, and listened with
delight to the rumble of growls the dogs exchanged.
"Ye better look out. If Speaker jumps on yo' dog he'll thest
about eat him up," the child warned.
The tall man swept his grandson with a dominating gaze that was
used to see the people about Jesse Lance obey. But things that
scared other children were apt to evoke little Lance's scornful
laughter or stir up fight in him.
"You call off yo' hound," the newcomer said imperiously. "I
don't let my dog fight with every cur he meets."
The small boy wheeled--hands in trouser pockets--and gazed with
disappointed eyes to where the two canines were making friends.
"I wish they would jump on each other; I thest [106] wish't they
would," he muttered. "I know Speaker could whip."
Grandfather Lance looked with interest at the child. Such a boy
had he been. This was the spirit he had bequeathed to Lance's
mother, and which she had wasted when she married a schoolteacher.
Melissa Cleaverage, come down in the world now, paid timid court
to her father without much success; but in the middle of the
afternoon, her four-year-old son settled the question of the
visitor remaining for the night. Jesse Lance had been across the
gulch to look at some wild land which belonged to him, up on the
head waters of the creek called Lance's Laurel, a haggard, noble
domain, its lawless acres still tossing an unbroken sea of green
tree-tops towards the sky. As he returned to the Cleaverage
place, he traversed a little woods-path without noticing the
small jeans-clad boy who dragged a number of linked objects
across the way.
"You gran'pap!" came the shrill challenge after him. "You quit
a-breakin' up my train."
Jesse glanced toward the ground and saw a great oak chip dangling
by a string against his boot. He turned an impassive countenance,
and thrust with his foot to free it from its entanglement.
"Watch out--you'll break it!" cried the child, running up. Then,
as a second jerk shook and rattled the dangling bit of wood,
"Ain't you got [107] no sense?" he roared. "That's the injine to my
train that you done stepped on and broke all up, and it cain't
go a lick with you, big, lazy loafer, standin' right in the
middle of it!"
For a moment the fierce baby eyes looked up into eyes as fierce
above them. Such a glance should have sent any youngster weeping
to its mother's skirts; but the tiny man on the woods-path stood
his ground, ruffling like a game cock.
"Uh-huh!" jeered the grandfather, "and who might you be, young
feller?"
"I'm cap'n of this train," Lance flung back at him, scarlet of
face, his form rigid, his feet planted wide on the mold of the
path.
Grim amusement showed itself in the elder countenance. Yet Jesse
Lance was not used to permitting himself to be defied. Not since
Melissa had run rough-shod over him and held his heart in her
little grubby hands, had another been allowed such liberties.
"Oh, ye air, air ye? Well, that's mighty big talk for little
breeches," he taunted, to see whether the spirit that looked out
at him from his grandson's eyes went deep, or was mere surface
bravado.
He got his answer. With a roar the baby charged him, gripped the
big man around the knees and swung.
"Git off'n my injine!" he bellowed, contorting his small body to
hammer with his toes the offending legs he clung to. "I told you
once civil, and [108] you didn't go. I'm cap'n of this train, and I
can throw rowdies off when they won't go."
The lines of the man's face puckered curiously as he looked down
at the small assailant. Without another word he freed his foot
from the chip-and-string "train," moving circumspectly and with
due regard to flimsy couplings. Without another word he stepped
slowly on, looking across his shoulder once, to note that Lance
instantly joined his train into shape and, turning his back on
his big adversary, promptly forgot all about him. Where the
woods-path struck the big road, the grandfather stood a long
moment and studied his grandson; then he made his way to the
house where eleven year-old Roxy sat sorting wild greens on the
porch edge.
"How old is that chap back thar?" he inquired of her brusquely.
"Brother Lance? W'y, he ain't but fo' year old," Roxana returned
sanctimoniously. "Gran'pap, you mustn't hold it agin' him that
he's so mean--he's but fo' year old. An' Poppy won't never whip
him like he ort. If Poppy would jest give him a good dosin' of
hickory tea, I 'low he'd come of his meanness mighty quick."
Jesse Lance merely grunted in reply to these pious observations,
and in his mind there framed itself a codicil to be added to
that will. Melissa--Melissa who married Kimbro Cleaverage--had
been left out of both testaments so far; but she [109] was his
favorite child, and it had been in her father's mind to bequeath
to her the wild land up in the Gap. Yet of what use would such a
piece of timber be to a woman? And it would be of less account
to a man like Kimbro Cleaverage. They would but sell it for the
meagre price someone might offer their necessities now. No, the
dauntless captain of the train back there on the path was the
one to own the Gap hundred. Such a man as he promised to become,
would subdue that bit of savage nature, and live with and upon
it. The lawyer in Hepzibah should fix the will that way.
Susan Lance died in her husband's absence; and the pair of mules
Jesse had bought in the Settlement ran away with him on his
journey home, pitching themselves, the wagon and driver, all
over a cliff and breaking his neck. So it was that the codicil
to the will left "to my namesake Lance Cleaverage, the Gap
hundred on Lance's Laurel," not then of as much value as it had
now become. High on the side of the slope it lay, as befitted
the heritage of a free hunter. The timber on it was straight,
tall and clean, mostly good hardwood. Here was the head of Lance's
Laurel, a bold spring of pure freestone water bursting out from
under a bluff--a naked mass of sandstone which fronted the sky near
his boundary-line--in sufficient volume to form with its own waters
the upper creek. A mile down, this [110] stream joined itself to
Burnt Cabin Laurel, and the two formed Big Laurel. This water
supply, unusually fine even in that well-watered country, added
greatly to the value of the tract as a homestead. Coal had been
found on the other side of the ridge, and Lance, who believed
in his star, thought it reasonable to expect that coal would be
discovered on his own land.
Meantime, though he had cleared none of it for crops--not even
the necessary truck-patch--he made a little opening on a fine,
sightly rise, with a more lofty eminence behind it, and set to
work building his cabin. Scorning the boards from the portable
sawmill which would have offered him a flimsy shanty at best,
hot in the brief, vivid summer and cold in winter, he marked the
best timber for the purpose, and planned a big, two-penned log
house, with an open porch between. Lance, his father and
Sylvane, spent more than ten days getting out the trees. It took
forty boles to build a single pen ten logs high; and as Lance
had decided to have the rooms measure fourteen feet inside, each
must be cut to fifteen foot length. Then, since he was
fastidious in the matter of a straight wall, Lance himself
measured and lined each one and scored it to line, his father
coming behind him with a broad-axe and hewing it flat on the two
sides, leaving the log perhaps about five inches through,
whatever its height might be, and thus securing a flat [111] wall
of even thickness. For the kitchen at the back, it was thought good
enough to snake the logs up in the round, with the bark all on,
and merely skelp them roughly as they were put up one by one.
It took only a day to raise the walls of the cabin on Lance's
Laurel, for the owner was tremendously popular, and there was
help enough offered in friendly country fashion that day to have
raised another pen, had the logs been ready. Roxy Griever and
little Polly came across the gulch with dinner for the men; but
the best things the laughing jovial party had, Lance cooked for
them on an open camp-fire.
The roof was of hand-rived clapboards which Lance and Sylvane got
out; but all the flooring was of tongued and grooved boards, brought
from the Hepzibah planing mill, narrow, smooth, well-fitted,
well-laid.
There were not in all the Turkey Track neighborhoods such door-and
window-frames, nor doors of such quality, all hauled up from the
planing mill.
When it came to the chimney, Lance was the master hand, a mason
by trade, and sent for far and near to build chimneys or doctor
one which refused to draw. He had chosen the stones from the
creek-bed, water-washed, clean, offering traceries of white here
and there on their steely, blue-gray surfaces. He debated long
over the question of a rounded arch with keystone for the front
of [112] his fireplace, as is the manner of all the older chimneys
in the mountains; but finally he and Sylvane found one day a single
straight arch rock so long that it could be laid across the
jambs, and this he shaped a bit and hauled up for the purpose.
The day he set in the chimney-throat the iron bar from which to
hang the kettles, Sylvane lay watching him.
"Now, that's what Sis' Roxy's been a-wantin' ever sence I can
remember," the younger brother commented, as Lance manipulated
the mortar and set stone upon stone with nice skill.
"Uh-huh," assented the proprieter of Lance's Laurel lightly.
"She wants it too bad. If she'd just want it easier, maybe she'd
get it, one of these days."
He laughed drolly down at the boy lying on the grass, and both
remembered the long dreary tirades by which poor Roxy had tried
to get her brother to so amend the home hearth that cooking
should be rendered less laborious for her.
And it was to this home that Lance Cleaverage brought his bride.
Here it was that he hoped to build that true abiding place which
such spirits as Lance seek, and crave, and seldom find. The
hearthstone he had himself laid, the skilfully built chimney,
with its dream of Callista sitting on one side of the hearth and
himself on the other--these were gropings after the answers such
as he always asked of life. [113]
"This ain't what Pap calls a sojourning place--this here's going
to be a real home, Callista," he said eagerly, as the two young
creatures went about it examining their new habitation the next
morning. "It'll be cool in the summer, and good and warm in the
winter. That chimney'll draw--just look at the fire. I never
have built a chimney that smoked."
"Did you build the chimney, Lance?" Callista asked him, leaning
on his arm.
"I did that," he told her. "They're always after me to build
other folks' chimneys and lay other people's hearthstones, and I
ain't so very keen to do it--and it don't pay much--up here. But
my own--one for you and me to sit by--"
He broke off and stared down at her, his eyes suddenly full of
dreams. Oh, the long winter evenings; they two together beside
the leaping hearth-fire. They would be as one. Surely into this
citadel he had builded for his life, the enemy--the olden
lonesomeness--could never come.
They had their bit of breakfast, and Lance was about to go down
to the Settlement to purchase the wherewithal for the impromptu
infare. It was hard to leave her. He went out and fed the black
horses and came back to say good-bye once more. His team was his
hope of a subsistence, seeing that there was no cleared land to
farm. He and they together could earn a living for two or three
months yet. After that, there would [114] be small opportunity
throughout the winter for teaming. Through the summer he had
been hauling tan-bark on the contract for old man Derf. Nearly
all of this money he had spent upon the house; and he felt he
had now to draw upon what remained--though it was not yet quite
due--for the expenses of the infare. Callista was down at the
hearth as he entered, the tiny blaze in its center warming the
whiteness of her throat and chin where she bent to hang a pot on
the bar his skill and forethought had placed there for her.
Something mighty and primal and terribly sweet shook the soul of
Lance Cleaverage as he looked at her kneeling there. She was
his--his mate. He would never be alone again. He ran to her and
dropped his arm about her. She turned up to him that flushing,
tender, responsive countenance which was new to both of them.
"Hadn't I better buy you a pair of slippers?" he asked her, just
for the pleasure of having her answer.
"I reckon I don't need 'em, Lance," she said soberly, getting to her
feet and moving with him toward the door. "If I could dance--or
if I ever did dance--I might have need of such."
"Dance!" echoed her husband with quick tenderness, looking down
at her as they paused on the doorstone. "If you was to dance,
Callista, there wouldn't any of the other gals want to stand up
on the floor beside you. I'm goin' to get the slippers." [115]
He rode away on his black horse, her fond eyes following him;
and the sight of her standing in the door waving her hand was
his last vision of home.
At the gate, far down the slope, he stopped for some imaginary
investigation of his accoutrements, but really to have an excuse
to turn and wave to Callista, cupping his hands and calling
back, "I'm going to bring you the finest pair of slippers I can
buy."
For in his pocket was one of her shoes, and in his mind the firm
intention of getting so light and flexible a pair of slippers
that his girl should be coaxed into learning to dance. Callista
not dance--it was unthinkable! Of course she would dance. Vaguely
his mind formed the picture of her swaying to the rhythm of music.
His eyes half closed, he let black Satan choose his own gait, as
his arms felt somehow the light pressure of her form within them,
and he was dancing with Callista. On--on--on through the years
with Callista. She should not grow old and faded and workworn,
nor he hardened, commonplace, indifferent. There should be love
and tenderness--beauty and music and movement--in their lives.
And she should dance for him--with him--Callista, who had never
yet danced with anyone.
Early morning shadows lay cool across the road; ground-squirrels
frisked among the boulders by [116] the way. The far mountains were
of a wonderful morning color, not blue, but a blend of the tint of
the golden sun-warmed slopes with that of the air; a color of
dream, of high romance--a color of ideals.
At one time he was roused from his thoughts by a bee-like drone
of voices, accompanied by jangling cowbells. Around the turn
ahead of him came a herd of spotted yearlings, their shaggy
hides clustered with the valley's wayside burrs. They took the
road, crowding stupidly against his horse, and shuffled by; then
followed two riders, driving the bunch to mountain pastures to
find their own living until winter should set in--an old man in
a faded hat and shawl, gaunt, humped over his saddle-bow; and
his son beside him on a better horse, but colorless of feature
as himself.
"Howdy," said Lance, smiling, and they answered him, "Howdy."
But he was moved to a new pity for these men, whom he did not
know, and for all their kind who are born and live, God knew
why, without the eagle power of soaring into blue gulfs of
dream. He rode with his head high, eye bright, his cheek
glowing, his whole body tingling in the exquisite flow of the
frost-sweetened morning air upon it. The horse, too, felt the
touch of last night's frost, and fretted against the bit until
Lance, with a shout, let him go. Then the road underfoot rushed
past with the wind as the two splendid, [117] exultant creatures
flew over it, for the moment so far in sympathy that they seemed
one. They found themselves reluctantly slowing down at the front
fence of the Derf place. The pack of hounds burst from under the
porch, and ran baying out to meet Lance. Iley Derf's Indian
husband crouched at the corner of the cabin picking up something,
and moved noiselessly away with an armful of wood. The clamor of
the hounds brought Derf himself out, and Lance had a glimpse of
women moving about at household work in the cabin.
"Light--light and come in," Garrett Derf greeted him. "I hear
you and old Jeff Drumright had it up an' down last night, and
that you beat the old hypocrite out."
"Much obliged, I ain't got time to get down," Lance answered,
ignoring the rest of Derf's speech. "I just stopped as I was
passing to get some money."
Derf's eyes narrowed to slits. He lounged forward, bent and
secured a bit of wood from the chip pile and commenced to
whittle. Such rapid and abrupt negotiations are quite foreign to
mountain business ethics, where it takes a half a day to collect
a day's wages.
"Want some money," Derf repeated contemplatively. "You mean that
thar money for the haulin', I reckon."
"Yes," returned Lance impatiently, "I couldn't very well mean
any other." [118]
"Well, Lance, you shorely ain't forgettin' that that thar money
ain't due till next month," Derf said, setting a foot on the
chopping block and proceeding to pick his teeth with the
toothpick he had shaped. "The haulin' ain't all done yet."
"No, I ain't forgot that; but I knew you had money by you, and I
didn't reckon you'd object to paying some of it ahead of time."
Cleaverage forced himself to speak civilly, though his temper
was rising. Derf chuckled.
"Now see here," he shifted the raised foot, and set forth
evidently on a long argument. "Thar ain't no man livin' that
likes to pay money afore hit's due. Ef I've got the cash by me,
that's my good fortune. Ef you want payment ahead of time, it's
worth somethin'. What do you aim to take for the debt as it
stands, me to pay you today? Of course I'm good for it; but this
here business is the same as discountin' a note, and that calls
for money. What'll you take, Lance?"
"Whatever you'll give me, I reckon," Lance came back quickly,
with light scorn. "Looks like you've got it your own way. What
are you offering?"
"Oh, I ain't offerin' nothin'," Derf receded from his
proposition. A shrewd enjoyment was evident beneath the surface
stupidity and reluctance. "It's you that wants the money. Looks
like you must want it pretty bad."
Nothing but the fact that he conceived it [119] necessary to have
the funds, kept Lance from breaking out wrathfully and leaving his
tormentor.
"See here, Garrett Derf," he said at last, divided between scorn
and angry dignity, "I made you one offer--and I'd think the
meanest man would call it good enough--I'll take what money you
choose to give me. Now you can say the rest."
"See here, Lance," echoed Derf, grinning, and glancing toward
the cabin, "you ort not to trade so careless these days and
times. Yo're a married man now; you've got to look out for yo'
spare cash, or yo' ol' woman'll be in yo' hair. What you needin'
all this here money for, anyway?"
The day before, Derf durst not for his life inquire so closely
into Lance Cleaverage's affairs. Now he felt that he held the
boy in a cleft stick. Something of this Lance understood; also,
the allusion to Callista's right to vise his bargains stung him
beyond reason. No doubt he knew at bottom that what he was now
engaged on was unfair to her.
"If you're going to pay, you'd better be about it," he said to
Derf. "I've got some buying to do when I get my money, and
Frazee's store is a right smart ways from here."
Derf came through the fence and laid a detaining hand on Satan's
mane, getting nipped at for his pains.
"You ain't got the time to go down to the store and buy, and git
back home by night," he argued. [120] "Better trade with me, Lance.
I brung up a wagon load of goods last time I was down. I aim to
put in shelving and set up regular next month."
A quick change went over Lance's face.
"Have you got any women's slippers--that size?" the bridegroom
asked eagerly, drawing Callista's shoe from his pocket.
Derf took the shoe in his hand and fingered it, bending so his
countenance was concealed. Lance became aware of a heaving of
the man's shoulders, a gurgling, choking sound that at length
resolved itself into a fierily offensive chuckle.
"Buyin' shoes for her the fust day!" snickered Garrett Derf.
The young fellow bent from his saddle and swooped the bit of
foot-gear out of the other's fingers--it looked so much as
though he would clout Garrett Derf on the side of the head with
it that the latter dodged hastily.
"Are you going to trade, or are you not?" he asked with blazing
eyes. "I got something else to do besides stand here talking."
"I'll give you half," bantered Derf, still holding discreetly
out of range, but wiping the tears of delicious mirth from the
corners of his eyes.
"I'll take it," returned Lance sharply, thrusting forth his
hand. "Have you got it with you?"
The chance was too good to lose. Derf [121] instantly ceased
chuckling, reached down in a capacious pocket and hauled up a
great wallet, out of which he began to count the money, looking up
furtively every moment to see if Lance had been only jesting, or if
his temper and that reckless spirit of his were sufficiently roused
to carry through the outrageous trade. But when the few bills and
the bit of silver were ready, Lance took them, put them carelessly
into his pocket without the usual careful fingering and counting,
and wheeled Satan toward the road.
"Ain't you goin' to tell a body 'howdy'?" came a treble hail
from the cabin as he did so, and Ola Derf's small face, still
disfigured from her tears of last night, presented itself at the
doorway. "Lance, wait a minute--I want to speak with you," the
girl called; and then she came running down to the fence and out
into the road. "Was you and Pap a-fussin'? Ye ain't goin' to be
mad with us becaze Callista and her folks never was friendly
with us, air ye?" she inquired doubtfully, looking up at him
with drowned eyes.
Pity stirred Lance's heart. Poor little thing, she had always been
a friendly soul, since the two were tow-headed tykes of six playing
hookey together from the bit of summer school, as devoted as a dog,
observant of his mood and careful of all his preferences. It was
rare for her to thrust upon him her own distress, or to let him see
her other than cheerful, eagerly willing to [122] forward his plans.
And he remembered with resentment that both at his own home and
Callista's after some heated discussion of his proposition to invite
the Derfs, he had said they could have it their own way, and no
invitation had been given.
"Well, you and me ain't going to fuss, anyhow, are we, Ola?" he
said heartily. "I bid you to the infare at my house to-night. I
was just gettin' the money from your father to buy some things
that Callista'll need for it."
Square, stubbed, the little brown girl stood at the roadside
shading her gaze with one small, rough hand, looking up at the
mounted man with open, unchanged adoration. Her eyes--the eyes
of an ignorant little half savage--enlightened by love, valued
accurately the perfect carriage of his shapely head on the brown
throat, the long, tapering line from waist to toe, as he sat at
ease in the saddle. Who of them all was the least bit like
Lance, her man of men, with his quizzical smile, his blithe,
easy mastery of any situation?
"Hit's too late now for you to go away down yon to the store,
ain't it. Lance?" the girl asked him timidly. "Don't you want to
come in and see the new things Pappy brung up from the
Settlement? I believe in my soul he's got the prettiest dancin'
shoes I ever laid my eyes on--but Callista don't dance," she
amended. [123]
Lance sighted at the sun. He was entirely too late for a trip to
Hepzibah--he knew that. The shoe in his pocket nudged him in the
side and suggested that this was the place for buying Callista's
slippers. Without more ado he sprang from Satan's back, flung
the reins over a fence post, and followed Ola into the big shed
where the goods for the new store were piled heterogeneously on
the floor. [124]