"When I goes a-huntin' up yander ter Pine Lick, they is mighty perlite
ter me. They ain't never done nothin' agin me, ez I knows on." Then,
after a pause of deep cogitation, he added, "Nor hev they said nothin'
agin me, nuther."
Cynthia took up her side of the dialogue, if dialogue it could be
called, with wonted irrelevancy: "That thar Becky Stiles, she's got
the freckledest face--ez freckled ez any turkey-aig" (with an
indescribable drawl on the last word).
"They ain't done nothin' agin me," reiterated Jacob astutely, "nor
said nothin' nuther--none of 'em."
Cynthia looked hard across the amphitheatre at the distant Great Smoky
Mountains shimmering in the hazy September sunlight--so ineffably
beautiful, so delicately blue, that they might have seemed the ideal
scenery of some impossibly lovely ideal world. Perhaps she was
wondering what the unconscious Becky Stiles, far away in those dark
woods about Pine Lick, had secured in this life besides her freckled
face. Was this the sylvan deity of the young hunter's adoration?
Cynthia took off her sunbonnet to use it for a fan. Perhaps it was
well for her that she did so at this moment; it had so entirely
concealed her head that her hair might have been the color of Becky
Stiles's, and no one the wiser. The dark brown tendrils curled
delicately on her creamy forehead; the excitement of the day had
flushed her pale cheeks with an unwonted glow; her eyes were alight
with their newly kindled fires; the clinging curtain of her bonnet had
concealed the sloping curves of her shoulders--altogether she was
attractive enough, despite the flare of her yellow dress, and
especially attractive to the untutored eyes of Jacob Brice. He
relented suddenly, and lost all the advantages of his tact and
diplomacy.
"I likes ye better nor I does Becky Stiles," he said moderately. Then
with more fervor, "I likes ye better nor any gal I ever see."
The usual long pause ensued.
"Ye hev got a mighty cur'ous way o' showin' it," Cynthia replied.
"I dunno what ye 're talkin' 'bout, Cynthy."
"Ye hev got a mighty cur'ous way o' showin' it," she reiterated, with
renewed animation--"a-comin' all the way down hyar from the mountings
ter beat my dad out'n that thar saddle an' bridle, what he's done sot
his heart onto. Mighty cur'ous way."
"Look hyar, Cynthy." The young hunter broke off suddenly, and did not
speak again for several minutes. A great perplexity was surging this
way and that in his slow brains--a great struggle was waging in his
heart. He was to choose between love and ambition--nay, avarice too
was ranged beside his aspiration. He felt himself an assured victor in
the competition, and he had seen that saddle and bridle. They were on
exhibition to-day, and to him their material and workmanship seemed
beyond expression wonderful, and elegant, and substantial. He could
never hope otherwise to own such accoutrements. His eyes would never
again even rest upon such resplendent objects, unless indeed in
Hollis's possession. Any one who has ever loved a horse can appreciate
a horseman's dear desire that beauty should go beautifully
caparisoned. And then, there was his pride in his own riding, and his
anxiety to have his preeminence in that accomplishment acknowledged
and recognized by his friends, and, dearer triumph still, by his
enemies. A terrible pang before he spoke again.
"Look hyar, Cynthy," he said at last; "ef ye will marry me, I won't
go back in yander no more. I'll leave the premi-_um_ ter them ez kin
git it."
"Ye're foolish, Jacob," she replied, still fanning with the yellow
calico sunbonnet. "Ain't I done tole ye, ez how they don't think
nothin' of ye ter our house? I don't want all of 'em a-jowin' at me,
too."
"Ye talk like ye ain't got good sense, Cynthy," said Jacob irritably.
"What's ter hender me from hitchin' up my mare ter my uncle's wagon
an' ye an' me a-drivin' up hyar to the Cross-Roads, fifteen mile, and
git Pa'son Jones ter marry us? We'll get the license down hyar ter the
Court House afore we start. An' while they'll all be a-foolin' away
thar time a-ridin' round that thar ring, ye an' me will be a-gittin'
married." Ten minutes ago Jacob Brice did not think riding around that
ring was such a reprehensible waste of time. "What's ter hender? It
don't make no differ how they jow then."
"I done tole ye, Jacob," said the sedate Cynthia, still fanning with
the sunbonnet.
With a sudden return of his inspiration, Jacob retorted, affecting an
air of stolid indifference: "Jes' ez _ye_ choose. I won't hev ter ax
Becky Stiles twict."
And he turned to go.
"I never said no, Jacob," said Cynthia precipitately. "I never said ez
how I wouldn't hev ye."
"Waal, then, jes' come along with me right now while I hitch up the
mare. I ain't a-goin' ter leave yer a-standin' hyar. Ye're too
skittish. Time I come back ye'd hev done run away I dunno whar." A
moment's pause and he added: "Is ye a-goin' ter stand thar all day,
Cynthy Hollis, a-lookin' up an' around, and a-turnin' yer neck fust
this way and then t'other, an' a-lookin' fur all the worl' like a wild
turkey in a trap, or one o' them thar skeery young deer, or sech
senseless critters? What ails the gal?"
"Thar'll be nobody ter help along the work ter our house," said
Cynthia, the weight of the home difficulties bearing heavily on her
conscience.
"What's ter hender ye from a-goin' down thar an' lendin' a hand every
wunst in a while? But ef ye're a-goin' ter stand thar like ye hedn't
no more action than a--a-dunno-what,--jes' like yer dad, I ain't. I'll
jes' leave ye a-growed ter that thar post, an' I'll jes' light out
stiddier, an' afore the cows git ter Pine Lick, I'll be thar too. Jes'
ez ye choose. Come along ef ye wants ter come. I ain't a-goin' ter ax
ye no more."
"I'm a-comin'," said Cynthia.
There was great though illogical rejoicing on the part of the country
faction when the crowds were again seated, tier above tier, in the
amphitheatre, and the riders were once more summoned into the arena,
to discover from Jacob Brice's unaccounted-for absence that he had
withdrawn and left the nominee to his chances.
In the ensuing competition it became very evident to the not
altogether impartially disposed judges that they could not, without
incurring the suspicions alike of friend and foe, award the premium to
their fellow-townsman. Straight as a shingle though he might be, more
prepossessing to the eye, the ex-cavalryman of fifty battles was far
better trained in all the arts of horsemanship.
A wild shout of joy burst from the rural party when the most portly
and rubicund of the portly and red-faced judges advanced into the ring
and decorated Jenkins Hollis with the blue ribbon. A frantic
antistrophe rent the air. "Take it off!" vociferated the bitter town
faction--"take it off!"
A diversion was produced by the refusal of the Colbury champion to
receive the empty honor of the red ribbon and the certificate. Thus
did he except to the ruling of the judges. In high dudgeon he faced
about and left the arena, followed shortly by the decorated Jenks,
bearing the precious saddle and bridle, and going with a wooden face
to receive the congratulations of his friends.
The entries for the slow mule race had been withdrawn at the last
moment; and the spectators, balked of that unique sport, and the fair
being virtually over, were rising from their seats and making their
noisy preparations for departure. Before Jenks had cleared the
fair-building, being somewhat impeded by the moving mass of humanity,
he encountered one of his neighbors, a listless mountaineer, who spoke
on this wise:--
"Does ye know that thar gal o' yourn--that thar Cynthy?"
Mr. Hollis nodded his expressionless head--presumably he did know
Cynthia.
"Waal," continued his leisurely interlocutor, still interrogative,
"does ye know Jacob Brice?"
Ill-starred association of ideas! There was a look of apprehension on
Jenkins Hollis's wooden face.
"They hev done got a license down hyar ter the Court House an' gone
a-kitin' out on the Old B'ar road."
This was explicit.
"Whar's my horse?" exclaimed Jenks, appropriating "John Barleycorn" in
his haste. Great as was his hurry, it was not too imperative to
prevent him from strapping upon the horse the premium saddle, and
inserting in his mouth the new bit and bridle. And in less than ten
minutes a goodly number of recruits from the crowd assembled in
Colbury were also "a-kitin'" out on the road to Old Bear, delighted
with a new excitement, and bent on running down the eloping couple
with no more appreciation of the sentimental phase of the question and
the tender illusions of love's young dream than if Jacob and Cynthia
were two mountain foxes.
Down the red-clay slopes of the outskirts of the town "John
Barleycorn" thunders with a train of horsemen at his heels. Splash
into the clear fair stream whose translucent depths tell of its
birthplace among the mountain springs--how the silver spray showers
about as the pursuers surge through the ford leaving behind them a
foamy wake!--and now they are pressing hard up the steep ascent of the
opposite bank, and galloping furiously along a level stretch of road,
with the fences and trees whirling by, and the September landscape
flying on the wings of the wind. The chase leads past fields of
tasseled Indian corn, with yellowing thickly swathed ears, leaning
heavily from the stalk; past wheat-lands, the crops harvested and the
crab-grass having its day at last; past "woods-lots" and their black
shadows, and out again into the September sunshine; past rickety
little homes, not unlike Hollis's own, with tow-headed children,
exactly like his, standing with wide eyes, looking at the rush and
hurry of the pursuit--sometimes in the ill-kept yards a wood-fire is
burning under the boiling sorghum kettle, or beneath the branches of
the orchard near at hand a cider-mill is crushing the juice out of the
red and yellow, ripe and luscious apples. Homeward-bound prize cattle
are overtaken--a Durham bull, reluctantly permitting himself to be led
into a fence corner that the hunt may sweep by unobstructed, and
turning his proud blue-ribboned head angrily toward the riders as if
indignant that anything except him should absorb attention; a gallant
horse, with another floating blue streamer, bearing himself as
becometh a king's son; the chase comes near to crushing sundry
grunting porkers impervious to pride and glory in any worldly
distinctions of cerulean decorations, and at last is fain to draw up
and wait until a flock of silly over-dressed sheep, running in frantic
fear every way but the right way, can be gathered together and guided
to a place of safety.
And once more, forward; past white frame houses with porches, and
vine-grown verandas, and well-tended gardens, and groves of oak and
beech and hickory trees--"John Barleycorn" makes an ineffectual but
gallant struggle to get in at the large white gate of one of these
comfortable places, Squire Goodlet's home, but he is urged back into
the road, and again the pursuit sweeps on. Those blue mountains, the
long parallel ranges of Old Bear and his brothers, seem no more a
misty, uncertain mirage against the delicious indefinable tints of the
horizon. Sharply outlined they are now, with dark, irregular shadows
upon their precipitous slopes which tell of wild ravines, and
rock-lined gorges, and swirling mountain torrents, and great,
beetling, gray crags. A breath of balsams comes on the freshening
wind--the lungs expand to meet it. There is a new aspect in the scene;
a revivifying current thrills through the blood; a sudden ideal beauty
descends on prosaic creation.
"'Pears like I can't git my breath good in them flat countries," says
Jenkins Hollis to himself, as "John Barleycorn" improves his speed
under the exhilarating influence of the wind. "I'm nigh on to
sifflicated every time I goes down yander ter Colbury" (with a jerk of
his wooden head in the direction of the village).
Long stretches of woods are on either side of the road now, with no
sign of the changing season in the foliage save the slender, pointed,
scarlet leaves and creamy plumes of the sourwood, gleaming here and
there; and presently another panorama of open country unrolls to the
view. Two or three frame houses appear with gardens and orchards, a
number of humble log cabins, and a dingy little store, and the
Cross-Roads are reached. And here the conclusive intelligence meets
the party that Jacob and Cynthia were married by Parson Jones an hour
ago, and were still "a-kitin'," at last accounts, out on the road to
Old Bear.
The pursuit stayed its ardor. On the auspicious day when Jenkins
Hollis took the blue ribbon at the County Fair and won the saddle and
bridle he lost his daughter.
They saw Cynthia no more until late in the autumn when she came,
without a word of self-justification or apology for her conduct, to
lend her mother a helping hand in spinning and weaving her little
brothers' and sisters' clothes. And gradually the _eclat_ attendant
upon her nuptials was forgotten, except that Mrs. Hollis now and then
remarks that she "dunno how we could hev bore up agin Cynthy's
a-runnin' away like she done, ef it hedn't a-been fur that thar saddle
an' bridle an' takin' the blue ribbon at the County Fair."