When thistles go adrift, the sun sets down the valley between the
hills; when snow comes, it goes down behind the Cumberland and streams
through a great fissure that people call the Gap. Then the last light
drenches the parson's cottage under Imboden Hill, and leaves an
after-glow of glory on a majestic heap that lies against the east.
Sometimes it spans the Gap with a rainbow.
Strange people and strange tales come through this Gap from the
Kentucky hills. Through it came these two, late one day--a man and a
woman--afoot. I met them at the foot-bridge over Roaring Fork.
"Is thar a preacher anywhar aroun' hyeh?" he asked. I pointed to the
cottage under Imboden Hill. The girl flushed slightly and turned her
head away with a rather unhappy smile. Without a word, the mountaineer
led the way towards town. A moment more and a half-breed Malungian
passed me on the bridge and followed them.
At dusk the next day I saw the mountaineer chopping wood at a shanty
under a clump of rhododendron on the river-bank. The girl was cooking
supper inside. The day following he was at work on the railroad, and
on Sunday, after church, I saw the parson. The two had not been to
him. Only that afternoon the mountaineer was on the bridge with
another woman, hideously rouged and with scarlet ribbons fluttering
from her bonnet. Passing on by the shanty, I saw the Malungian talking
to the girl. She apparently paid no heed to him until, just as he was
moving away, he said something mockingly, and with a nod of his head
back towards the bridge. She did not look up even then, but her face
got hard and white, and, looking back from the road, I saw her slipping
through the bushes into the dry bed of the creek, to make sure that
what the half-breed told her was true.
The two men were working side by side on the railroad when I saw them
again, but on the first pay-day the doctor was called to attend the
Malungian, whose head was split open with a shovel. I was one of two
who went out to arrest his assailant, and I had no need to ask who he
was. The mountaineer was a devil, the foreman said, and I had to club
him with a pistol-butt before he would give in. He said he would get
even with me; but they all say that, and I paid no attention to the
threat. For a week he was kept in the calaboose, and when I passed the
shanty just after he was sent to the county-seat for trial, I found it
empty. The Malungian, too, was gone. Within a fortnight the
mountaineer was in the door of the shanty again. Having no accuser, he
had been discharged. He went back to his work, and if he opened his
lips I never knew. Every day I saw him at work, and he never failed to
give me a surly look. Every dusk I saw him in his door-way, waiting,
and I could guess for what. It was easy to believe that the stern
purpose in his face would make its way through space and draw her to
him again. And she did come back one day. I had just limped down the
mountain with a sprained ankle. A crowd of women was gathered at the
edge of the woods, looking with all their eyes to the shanty on the
river-bank. The girl stood in the door-way. The mountaineer was
coming back from work with his face down.
"He hain't seed her yit," said one. "He's goin' to kill her shore. I
tol' her he would. She said she reckoned he would, but she didn't
keer."
For a moment I was paralyzed by the tragedy at hand. She was in the
door looking at him when he raised his head. For one moment he stood
still, staring, and then he started towards her with a quickened step.
I started too, then, every step a torture, and as I limped ahead she
made a gesture of terror and backed into the room before him. The door
closed, and I listened for a pistol-shot and a scream. It must have
been done with a knife, I thought, and quietly, for when I was within
ten paces of the cabin he opened the door again. His face was very
white; he held one hand behind him, and he was nervously fumbling at
his chill with the other. As he stepped towards me I caught the handle
of a pistol in my side pocket and waited. He looked at me sharply.
"Did you say the preacher lived up thar?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, breathlessly.
In the door-way just then stood the girl with a bonnet in her hand, and
at a nod from him they started up the hill towards the cottage. They
came down again after a while, he stalking ahead, and she, after the
mountain fashion, behind. And after this fashion I saw them at sunset
next day pass over the bridge and into the mouth of the Gap whence they
came. Through this Gap come strange people and strange tales from the
Kentucky hills. Over it, sometimes, is the span of a rainbow.