Henderson found Brother Fulkerson a preacher who, more by service and
example and comforting the disconsolate than by pulpit oratory, held a
strong influence upon his people, and commanded their deep devotion.
His quiet ministry had indeed been heard of beyond the hills and even
in the black days of feudal hatred, dead lines had been wiped out for
him so that he came and went freely among both factions, and no man
doubted him.
Kindly, grave and steadfast, Henderson found him to be, and possessed
of a natively shrewd brain, as well. Blossom was usually at the
Fulkerson house when Jerry called, but she fitted silently in the
background and her eyes regarded him with that shy gravity, in which he
found an insurmountable barrier to better acquaintance.
One morning as he passed the Fulkerson abode he found the girl alone by
the gate--and paused there.
The season's first tenderness of greenery along the slopes had ripened
now to the sunburned and freckled warmth of midsummer, but the day was
young enough for lingering drops of the heavy dew to remain on the
petals of the morning-glories and the weed stalks along the roadside.
Between the waxen delicacy and rich variety of the morning-glory petals
and the bloom of the girl, Jerry fell musingly to tracing analogies.
The morning-glory is among the most plebeian of flowering things,
boasting no nobility except a charm too fragile to endure long its
coarse companionship with smart-weed and mullen, so that each day it
comes confidently into being only to shrink shortly into disappointed
death.
Blossom, too, would in the course of nature and environment, have a
brief bloom and a swift fading--but just now her beauty was only
enhanced by the pathos of its doom.
"Blossom," he smilingly suggested, "I'd like to be friends with you,
just as I am with Turner. I'm not really an evil spirit you know, yet
you seem always half afraid of me."
The girl's lashes drooped shyly, veiling her splendid eyes, but she
made no immediate response to his amenities, and Henderson laughed.
"It's all the stranger," he said, "because I can't forget our first
meeting. Then you were the spirit of warfare. I can still seem to see
you standing there barring the path; your eyes ablaze and your nostrils
aquiver with righteous wrath."
For an instant, in recollection of the incident, she forgot her
timidity and there flashed into her face the swift illumination of a
smile.
"Thet war when I 'lowed ye war an enemy. Folks don't show no--I mean
don't show any--fear of thar enemies. Leastways--at least--mountain
folks don't."
He understood that attitude, but he smiled, pretending to misconstrue
it.
"Then I'm not dangerous as an enemy? It's only when I seek to be a
friend that I need be feared?"
Her flush deepened into positive confusion and her reply was faltering.
"I didn't mean nothin' like thet. Hit's jest thet when I tries ter talk
with ye, I feels so plumb ign'rant an'--an' benighted--thet--thet----"
She broke off and the man leaning on the fence bent toward her.
"You mean that when you talk to me you think I'm comparing you with the
girls I know down below, isn't that it?"
Blossom nodded her head and added, "With gals--girls I mean--that wears
fancy fixin's an' talks grammar."
"Sit down there for a minute, Blossom," he commanded, and when she had
enthroned herself on the square-hewn horse-block by the gate he seated
himself, cross-legged at her feet.
"Grammar isn't so very hard to learn," he assured her. "And any woman
who carries herself with your lance-like ease, starts out equipped with
more than 'fancy fixin's.' I want to tell you about a dream I had the
other night."
At once her face grew as absorbed as a child's at the promise of a
fairy story.
"I dreamed that I went to a very grand ball in a city down below. The
ladies were gorgeously dressed, but late in the evening an unknown girl
came into the room and everybody turned to look at her, forgetting all
the rest of the party." He paused a moment before adding, "I dreamed
that that girl was you."
"What did they all hev ter say about me?" she eagerly demanded.
"To be perfectly frank--you see it was a dream--most of them just
exclaimed: 'My God!'"
"I don't hardly censure 'em," admitted Blossom. "I reckon I cut a right
sorry figger at that party."
Henderson laughed aloud.
"But don't you see, that wasn't it at all. They were all breathless
with admiration. You had the things they would have given all their
jewels for--things they can't buy."
For a little space she looked at him with serious, pained eyes,
suspicious of ridicule, then the expression altered to bewilderment,
and her question came in a lowered voice.
"Things I hev thet they lacks? What manner of things air them--I
mean----those?"
"The very rare gifts of originality and an elfin personality," he
assured her. "Besides that you have beauty of the freshest and most
colorful sort."
For a moment Blossom flushed again shyly, then she lifted one hand and
pointed across the road.
"See thet white flower? Thet's wild parsely. I always calls it the pore
relation to the elder bush--but it's jest got to stay a pore
relation--always--because it started out thet way."
Henderson, as the summer progressed, discovered an absurd thought
lurking in his mind with annoying pertinacity. He could not for long
banish the fanciful picture of Blossom Fulkerson transplanted--of
Blossom as she might be with fuller opportunities for development.
There is an undeniable fascination in building air-castles about the
Cinderella theme of human transformations and the sight of her always
teased his imagination into play.
That these fantasies bore any personal relation to himself he did not
admit or even suspect. Readily enough, and satisfactorily enough he
explained to himself that he, who was accustomed to a life of teeming
activities, was here marooned in monotony. All things are measurable by
contrasts, and in her little world, Blossom stood out radiantly and
exquisitely different from her colorless sisters. When he had crossed
Cedar Mountain again and boarded a railroad train, more vital things
would engage him, and he would promptly forget the beautiful little
barbarian.
One hot afternoon in late July Jerry Henderson sat in the lounging-room
of his club in Louisville. The windows were open and the street noises,
after the still whispers of the mountains, seemed to beat on his senses
with discordant insistence. Down the length of the broad, wainscoted
hall he saw a party of young men in flannels and girls in soft muslins
passing out and he growled testily.
"All cut to a single pattern!" he exclaimed. "All impeccably
monotonous!" Then he irrelevantly added to himself, "I'm allowing
myself to become absurd--I expect its the damned heat. Anyhow she's
Bear Cat Stacy's gal!"
As Jerry sat alone he was, quite unconsciously, affording a theme of
conversation for two fellow clubmen in the billiard-room.
"I see Jerry Henderson has reappeared in our midst," commented one. "I
wonder what titanic enterprise is engaging his genius just now."
"Give it up," was the laconic reply. "But whatever it is, I'm ready to
wager he'll emerge from it unscathed and that everybody who backs him
will be ruined. That's the history of his buccaneer activities up to
date."
"What's his secret? Why don't his creditors fall on him and destroy
him?" inquired the first speaker and his companion yawned.
"It's the damned charm of the fellow, I suppose. He could hypnotize the
Shah of Persia into Calvinism."
For a moment the speakers fell silent, watching a shot on the
pool-table, then one of them spoke with languid interest.
"Whatever we may think of our friend Henderson, he's a picturesque
figure, and he's running a most diverting race. He's always just a jump
behind a billion dollars and just a jump ahead of the wolf and the
constable."
While this conversation proceeded, a heavy-set and elderly gentleman,
with determined eyes, entered the club. It was President Wallace of the
C. and S-E Railways, and palpably something was on his mind.
Glancing in at the reading-room, and seeing Henderson there, he
promptly disposed himself in a heavily cushioned chair at his side and
inquired:
"Well, what have you to report?"
"Very little so far," rejoined Henderson with his suavest smile. "You
see, there's a man up there who has an annoying capacity for seeing
into things and through things. On the day of my arrival he put his
finger on my actual purpose in coming."
"You mean Kinnard Towers, I presume." The railroad president drummed
thoughtfully on the table-top with his fingers. "I was afraid he would
try to hold us up."
Jerry nodded. "He pretends to be unalterably opposed to innovation, but
I fancy he really wants to be let in on the ground floor. He has
decided that unless he shares our loot, there is to be no plundering."
"Possibly," the railroad magnate spoke thoughtfully, "we'd better meet
his terms. The damned outlaw has power up there and we stand to win--or
lose--a little empire of wealth."
Henderson's closed fist fell softly but very firmly on the table. His
tone was smooth and determined. "Please leave me in command for a
while, Mr. Wallace. I mean to beat this highbinder at his own favorite
game. If we yield to him he'll emasculate our profits. You gave me five
years when we first discussed this thing. In that time I can accomplish
it."
"Take seven if you need them. It's worth it."
Sitting in the smoking-car of the train that was transporting him again
from civilization to "back of beyond," Jerry Henderson found himself
absorbed in somewhat disquieting thoughts.
He gazed out with a dulled admiration on the fertility of blue-grass
farms where the land rolled with as smooth and gracious a swell as a
woman's bosom. Always heretofore the Central Kentucky mansions with
their colonial dignity and quiet air of pride had brought an eager
appreciation to his thoughts--the tribute of one who worships an
aristocracy based on wealth.
But now when he saw again the tangled underbrush and outcropping rock
of the first foothills, something in him cried out, for the first time
since boyhood, "I'm going home!" When the altitudes began to clamber
into the loftiness of peaks, with wet streamers of cloud along their
slopes, the feeling grew. The sight of an eagle circling far overhead
almost excited him.
Jerry Henderson was a soldier of fortune, with Napoleonic dreams, and
finance was his terrain of conquest. To its overweening ambition he had
subordinated everything else. To that attainment he had pointed his
whole training, cultivating himself not only in the practicalities of
life but also in its refinements, until his bearing, his speech, his
manners were possibly a shade too meticulously perfect; too impeccably
starched.
Where other men had permitted themselves mild adventures in love and
moderate indulgence in drink, he had set upon his conduct a rigid
censorship.
His heart, like his conduct, had been severely schooled, for upon
marriage, as upon all else, he looked with an opportunist's eye.
His wife must come as an ally, strengthening his position socially and
financially. She must be a lady of the old aristocracy, bringing to his
house cultivated charm and the power of wealth. She must be fitted,
when he took his place among the financially elect, to reign with him.
So it was strange that as he sat here in the smoking-car he should be
thinking of an unlettered girl across Cedar Mountain, and acknowledging
with a boyish elation that on the way to Lone Stacy's house he would
pass her cabin, see her--hear the lilting music of her laugh.
And when Cedar Mountain itself rose before him he swung his way with
buoyant stride, up one side and down the other of the range.
Blossom was not in sight when at last he reached the Fulkerson cabin,
but the door stood open and Henderson approached it stealthily. He
paused for a moment, pondering how conspicuously the small house
contrasted with the shabbiness of its neighborhood. It was as trim as a
Swiss chalet, reflecting the personality of its mistress. Door frames
and window casings were neatly painted--and he knew that was Bear Cat's
labor of love. The low hickory-withed chairs on the porch were put
together with an approach to a craftsman's skill--and he knew that,
too, was Bear Cat's labor of love.
As he reached the porch he saw the girl herself sitting just within,
and a broad shaft of sun fell across her, lighting the exquisite
quality of her cheeks and the richness of her hair. She was bending
studiously over a book, and her lips were drooping with an unconscious
wistfulness.
Then, as his shadow fell, Blossom looked up and, in the sudden delight
with which she came to her feet, she betrayed her secret of a welcome
deeper than that accorded to a friendly but casual stranger.
They were still very much engrossed in each other when half an hour
later Bear Cat Stacy appeared without warning in the door. For just a
moment he halted on the threshold with pained eyes, before he entered.
The two men walked home together and, along the way, the younger was
unaccountably silent. His demeanor had relapsed into that shadow of
sullenness which it had often worn before Henderson's coming.
Finally Jerry smilingly demanded an explanation and Bear Cat Stacy
turned upon him a face which had suddenly paled. He spoke with a dead
evenness.
"We've been honest with each other up to now, Mr. Henderson, an' I
demands thet ye be honest with me still."
"I aim to be, Turner. What is it?"
The younger man gulped down a lump which had suddenly risen in his
throat, and jerked his head toward the house they had just left.
"Hit's Blossom. Does ye aim ter--ter co'te her?"
"Court her! What put such an idea into your head?"
"Never mind what put hit thar. I've got ter know! Blossom hain't never
promised ter wed me, yit, but----" He broke off and for a little while
could not resume though his face was expressive enough of his
wretchedness. Finally he echoed: "I've got to know! Ef she'd rather
marry _you_, she's got a license ter choose a-tween us. Only I hadn't
never thought of thet--an'----." Once more he fell silent.
"My God, Turner," exclaimed Jerry, with a sudden realization of the
absurdity of such an idea, "I could have no thought of marrying her."
"Why couldn't ye?" For an instant the gray eyes narrowed and into them
came a dangerous gleam. "Hain't she good enough--fer you or any other
man?"
Jerry Henderson nodded with grave assent.
"She's good enough for any man alive," he declared. "But I can't think
of marriage at all now. All my plans of life prohibit that." Bear Cat
Stacy drank in the clear air in a long breath of joyous relief.
"That's all I needs ter know," he said with entire sincerity. "Only,"
his voice dropped and he spoke very gently, "only, I reckon ye don't
realize how much yore eddycation counts with us thet wants hit an'
hain't got hit. Don't let her misunderstand ye none, Mr. Henderson. I
don't want ter see her hurt."