The afternoon was half spent and the sun, making its way toward the
purpled ridges of the west, was already casting long shadows athwart
the valleys. Along a trail which wound itself in many tortuous twists
across forested heights and dipped down to lose itself at intervals in
the creek bed of Little Slippery, a mounted traveler rode at a
snail-like pace. The horse was a lean brute through whose rusty coat
the ribs showed in under-nourished prominence, but it went
sure-footedly up and down broken stairways of slimy ledges where tiny
waterfalls licked at its fetlocks and along the brinks of chasms where
the sand shelved with treacherous looseness.
The rider, a man weather-rusted to a drab monotone, slouched in his
saddle with an apathetic droop which was almost stupor, permitting his
reins to flap loosely. His face, under an unclean bristle of beard,
wore a sleepy sneer and his eyes were bloodshot from white whiskey.
As he rode, unseeing, through the magnificent beauty of the Cumberlands
his glance was sluggish and his face emotionless. But at last the
horse halted where a spring came with a crystal gush out of the
rhododendron thickets, and then Ratler Webb's stupefaction yielded to
a semi-wakefulness of interest. He rubbed a shoddy coat-sleeve across
his eyes and straightened his stooped shoulders. The old horse had
thrust his nose thirstily into the basin with evident eagerness to
drink. Yet, after splashing his muzzle about for a moment he refused
refreshment and jerked his head up with a snort of disgust. A leering
smile parted the man's lips over his yellow and uneven teeth:
"So ye won't partake of hit, old Bag-o'-bones, won't ye?" he inquired
ironically. "Ye hain't nobody's brag critter to look at, but I reckon
some revenue fellers mought be willin' to pay a master price fer ye. Ye
kin stand at ther mouth of a spring-branch an' smell a still-house
cl'ar up on hits headwaters, kain't ye?"
For a while Webb suffered the tired horse to stand panting in the creek
bed, while his own eyes, lit now with a crafty livening, traveled up
the hillside impenetrably masked with verdure, where all was silence.
Somewhere up along the watercourse was the mash-vat and coil which had
contaminated this basin for his mount's brute fastidiousness: an
illicit distillery. This man clad in rusty store clothes was not
inspired with a crusading ardor for supporting the law. He lived among
men whose community opinion condones certain offenses--and pillories
the tale-bearer. But above the ethical bearing of local standards and
Federal Statutes, alike, loomed a matter of personal hatred, which
powerfully stimulated his curiosity. He raised one hand and
thoughtfully stroked his nose--recently broken with workman-like
thoroughness and reset with amateurish imperfection.
"Damn thet Bear Cat Stacy," he muttered, as he kicked his weary mount
into jogging motion. "I reckon I'll hev my chance at him yit. I'm jest
a-waitin' fer hit."
A half-mile further on, he suddenly drew rein and remained in an
attitude of alert listening. Then slipping quietly to the ground, he
hitched his horse in the concealment of a deep gulch and melted out of
sight into the thicket. Soon he sat crouched on his heels, invisible in
the tangled laurel. His place of vantage overlooked a foot-path so
little traveled as to be hardly discernible, but shortly a figure came
into view around a hulking head of rock, and Ratler Webb's smile
broadened to a grin of satisfaction. The figure was tall and spare and
it stooped as it plodded up the ascent under the weight of a heavy sack
upon its shoulders. The observer did not move or make a sound until the
other man had been for several minutes out of sight. He was engaged in
reflection.
"So, thet's how ther land lays," he ruminated. "Bear Cat Stacy's totin'
thet gryste over to Bud Jason's tub-mill on Little Ivy despite ther
fact thet thar's numerous bigger mills nigher to his house. Thet sack's
full of _sprouted_ corn, and he dasn't turn it in at no _reg'lar_ mill.
Them Stacys air jest about blockadin' up thet spring-branch."
He spat at a toad which blinked beadily up at him and then, rising from
his cramped posture, he commented, "I hain't plumb dead sartin yet, but
I aims ter be afore sun-up ter-morrer."
Bear Cat Stacy might have crossed the ridge that afternoon by a less
devious route than the one he followed. In so doing he would have saved
much weariness of leg and ache of burdened shoulder, but Ratler Webb's
summing up had been correct, and though honest corn may follow the
highways, sprouted grain must go by blinder trails.
When he reached the backbone of the heights, he eased the jute sack
from his shoulders to the ground and stretched the cramp out of his
arms. Sweat dripped from his face and streamed down the brown throat
where his coarse shirt stood open. He had carried a dead weight of
seventy pounds across a mountain, and must carry back another as heavy.
Now he wiped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and stood looking away
with a sudden distraction of dreaminess. A few more steps would take
him again into the steamy swelter of woods where no breath of breeze
stirred the still leafage, and even in the open spaces the afternoon
was torridly hot. But here he could sweep with his eyes league upon
league of a vast panorama where sky and peak mingled in a glory of
purple haze. Unaccountably the whole beauty of it smote him with a
sense of undefined appreciation and grateful wonderment. The cramp of
heart was eased and the groping voices of imagination seemed for the
time no longer tortured nightmares of complaint.
There was no one here to censor his fantasies and out of the gray eyes
went their veiling sullenness and out of the lips their taut grimness.
Into eyes and lips alike came something else--something touched with
the zealousness of aspiration.
"Hit's right over thar!" he murmured aloud but in a voice low pitched
and caressing of tone. "I've got ter get me money enough ter buy thet
farm offen Kinnard Towers."
He was looking down upon a point far below him where through a cleared
space flashed the shimmer of flowing water, and where in a small pocket
of acreage, the bottom ground rolled in gracious amenability to the
plow and harrow.
Again he nodded, and since he was quite alone he laughed aloud.
"She 'lows thet's ther place whar she wants ter live at," he added to
himself, "an' I aims ter satisfy her."
So after all some of his day-dreams were tangible!
He realized that he ought to be going on, yet he lingered and after a
few moments he spoke again, confiding his secrets to the open woods and
the arching skies--his only confidants.
"Blossom 'lowed yestiddy she was a-goin' over ter Aunt Jane Colby's
this mornin'. 'Pears like she ought ter be passin' back by hyar about
this time."
Cupping his hands at his lips, he sent out a long whoop, but before he
did that he took the precaution of concealing his sack of sprouted
grain under a ledge. Then he bent listening for an answer--but without
reward, and disappointment mantled in his gray eyes as he dropped to
the age-corroded rock and sat with his hands clasped about his updrawn
knees.
It was very still there, except for the industrious hammering of a
"peckerwood" on a decayed tree trunk, and the young mountaineer sat
almost as motionless as his pedestal.
Then without warning a lilting peal of laughter sounded at his back and
Turner came to his feet. As he wheeled he saw Blossom Fulkerson
standing there above him and her eyes were dancing with the mischievous
delight of having stalked him undiscovered.
"It's a right happy thing fer you, Turner Stacy, that I didn't aim ter
kill ye," she informed him with mock solemnity. "I've heered ye brag
thet no feller hereabouts could slip up on ye in the woods,
unbeknownst."
"I wasn't studyin' erbout nobody slippin' up on me. Blossom," he
answered calmly. "I hain't got no cause ter be a-hidin' out from
nobody."
She was standing with the waxen green of the laurel breaking into pink
flower-foam at her back and through the oak and poplar branches showed
scraps of blue sky--the blue of June.
A catch came into Turner's voice and he said somewhat huskily, "When
they christened ye Blossom they didn't misname ye none."
Blossom, he thought, was like a wild-rose growing among sun-flowers.
When the evening star came up luminous and dewy-fresh over the
darkening peaks, while twilight still lingered at the edges of the
world, he always thought of her.
But the charm was not all in his own eye: not all the magic endowment
of first love. The mountain preacher's daughter had escaped those
slovenly habits of backwoods life that inevitably coarsen. Her beauty
had slender strength and flower freshness.
Now she stood holding with one hand to the gnarled branch of a dogwood
sapling. A blue sunbonnet falling back from her head left the abundance
of her hair bared to the light so that it shimmered between brown and
gold.
She was perhaps sixteen and her heavily lashed eyes were brownish amber
and just now full of a mirthful sparkle.
"Ye seemed ter be studyin' about somethin' almighty hard," she insisted
teasingly. "I thought for a minute that mebbe ye'd done growed thar."
Turner Stacy smiled again as he looked at her. In his eyes was unveiled
and honest worship.
"I was a'studyin' about you, Blossom. I don't know no way ter do that
save almighty hard. Didn't ye hear me whoop?"
The girl's head nodded.
"Why didn't ye answer me?"
"I aimed ter slip up on ye, if I could, Turner, but I didn't low it
would be so plumb easy.--You made believe that yore ears could hear the
grass a-growin'."
The youth took a sudden step toward her and stood close, so close that
her breath touched his face fragrantly as she looked up with a witching
mockery in her eyes. His heart fluttered with the clamor of impulse to
seize her in his arms, but his half-lifted hands dropped to his sides.
He was not quite twenty-one and she was only sixteen, and the code of
the mountains is strict with the simplicity of the pioneer. A woman
gives her lips in betrothal or, giving them lightly, drops to the caste
of a light woman.
So the boy drew back with a resolute jerk of his head.
"I was a-studyin' erbout some day, Blossom," he said, "when thar's
a-goin' ter be a dwellin'-house down thar. Not a house of warped
timbers whar the hawgs scratch their backs under the floors--but a
_real_ house. Mebby by thet day an' time thar'll be a highway men kin
travel without torment." As he paused, at a loss for power of
architectural enlargement, the girl sighed.
"Then I reckon ye don't hardly 'low ter raise thet house in my
lifetime, Turner," she teased. "I'll most likely be too old ter visit
ye thar afore a highway gits built."
But he shook his head. "I aims ter speed up ther comin' of sich
things," he announced with the splendid effrontery of youth. "Hit
hain't been so long since ther fust wagon crossed Cedar Mountain. We're
liable to see balloons comin' afore we die."
"Aunt Jane Colby was tellin' me about that first wagon to-day at
dinner," Blossom assented. "She says one old man asked folks whether it
was true or whether he was fitified. He said: 'What manner of
_contrivance_ air thet? Hit's got four wheels an' one pair's bigger
then t'other pair, an' two of 'em goes round faster then t'other two
an' the Lord A'mighty only knows how hit manages ter keep up with
hitself.'"
They both laughed with young condescension for the old-fashioned and
then Turner went on, haltingly by reason of callow diffidence.
"Ef thet house couldn't be reared in time fer _you_ ter come to hit,
Blossom--hit wouldn't be no manner of use ter me a-tall."
"Does ye aim ter make me a present of a house?" she challenged and
again the provocative allurement of her swept him so that the smooth
sinews of his arms tightened as if with physical effort.
"I means thet someday--when I've done something worth doin' an' when
ye're a leetle bit older yoreself, Blossom, you're agoin' ter marry me,
an' we're goin' ter dwell thar--together."
The girl's cheeks reddened furiously and for a moment she made no
response, then she declared with a stout self-assertion designed to
mask her confusion, "I reckon I'll hev somethin' ter say about thet."
"Ye'll have _everything_ ter say about hit, Blossom, but"--there was a
purposeful ring in his voice that hinted at ultimate victory--"but some
day I aims ter persuade ye ter say, 'yes.'"
Her cheeks were brightly pink and she pretended to be engrossed in the
demeanor of a squirrel that chattered quarrelsomely at them from a
nearby poplar. Turner Stacy dropped his voice until it was very soft.
"I kin bide my time an' wait twell ye're ready, Blossom, but if ye
don't _never_ say hit, I don't hardly see how I kin go on livin'."
"I'm right glad ef ye likes me, Turner," she demurely assured him.
"We've growed up together an' ef ye was to go away somewhar's an' leave
me, I reckon I'd nigh die of lonesomeness."
Distrust of effusiveness was bred in his bone. Laconic utterance was
his heritage, and now that his heart demanded expression and his eyes
kindled with the dreamer's fire, he stood struggling against the
fettering of his tongue. Then abruptly, tumultuously he burst out,
talking fast.
"I hain't got ther gift of speech, Blossom; I only knows thet hit
hain't enough ter jest have ye miss me ef I went away. I knows thet
when ye stands thar with ther sun on yore hair hit would be springtime
fer me, even ef thar war snow on ther hillsides an' ice in ther creek.
I knows thet I'm standin' hyar on solid rock. Yore paw says these-hyar
hills were old when ther Alps hadn't riz up yit outen ther waters, but
when I looks at ye, Blossom, this mountain's shakin' under me ... an'
yore face is ther only thing thet's steady afore my eyes."
He broke off with something like a choke in his throat and Blossom was
trembling a little under that first impact of new emotion that comes
with the waking of the senses. Then she remembered the stories of his
escapades and her eyes clouded. Her hand fell flutteringly on his arm.
"If--if ye cares thet much about me, Turner, I wish--I don't aim ter
nag ye--but I wish ye'd promise me thet ye won't give men cause ter say
ye drinks too much."
Turner's brow contracted and his lips stiffened. The defensive mask
which seemed sullen because it was his idea of impassiveness set itself
again, but he nodded.
"Thet's a fair thing," he said slowly at last. "Drinkin' hain't hardly
a thing a gal kin understand noways. I hain't jest a common drunkard,
Blossom. Thar's times though when I feels es ef I war a-livin' in a
jail-house--an' seekin' ter git free. Thar's su'thin' in me--I don't
know jest what--thet's always fightin'. These hyar hills with their
ign'rance an' dirt an' poverty seems ter be on top of me 'stid of
underneath me. Thet's when I drinks too much. Fer a little spell I
seems ter dream I'm free."
A few minutes later the girl started down the "yon" side of the wooded
slope, going with a light step and humming a ballade that had come
across the sea with the beginnings of America, and the boy looked after
her with a passionate tenderness that was far from stoical.
If most of his dreams were intangible and misty, this, his greatest and
brightest dream, was at least clear and vivid.
When he could no longer see the flash of her blue dress between the
interlacing branches he turned, and drawing his sack of sprouted corn
out of its hiding place, hefted it to his shoulders. He would have to
hurry now to finish his task and get back by dusk.