"Stilling most gen'ally starts up pretty prompt atter the crap is laid
by. You see, the folks in this country mostly feels they have got a
fair right to do what pleases 'em with their corn they have raised, law
or no law, and that the Gover'ment hain't got no business meddling. And
I don't know but what they got right and jestice on their side, so fur
as right and jestice goes. But what I look at is, the devilish harm the
liquor does. Casting an eye back over a long lifetime, and the awful
wickedness of men, and the general meanness of their manœuvres, I can't
hardly ricollect a wrong that didn't have whiskey behind hit or mixed
up in hit. The infamious stuff!" he cried, leaning forward in his chair
with clenched hands, "hit ought to be buried face downward, unfathomed
deep, and writ over the grave, 'No reesurrection'!"
Settling back in his chair after a moment, he continued, in a different
voice: "Folks is allus a-counseling me, 'Take a leetle corn-liquor for
your rheumatiz'; hit's the holpingest medicine ever was made.' And
so hit may be. But I'd sooner stand the pain as to pour that devil's
potion down my neck. Now don't you get tore up in your minds over
them boys, women. I'll ax around and try to get on the track of where
they're getting that liquor."
In the evening, just before the "sing," the women spoke to Fult about
the trouble.
"Them boys need to have their necks broke for drinking too much and
disturbing your peace that way," he said; "they ought to know when to
stop. If I'd a-been in town, I'd a learnt 'em. Hit won't happen no
more; I'll put fear in 'em before I leave."
Sure enough, it did not happen again that week, and the women's fears
were laid to rest.
So, also, were Isabel's. Fult's behavior toward her during the week
was perfect. When he and his crowd rode in from the farm for the late
afternoon play-parties, he was friendly and pleasant, chose Lethie and
herself impartially for his partners, made no effort whatever to see
her alone, either then or after the evening "sings," and did not permit
himself so much as a glance that would trouble her. Occasionally he
and his friends would be absent at one or the other time; but usually
they were on hand, as were also Darcy and his crowd; and the women
congratulated themselves that the young men, the dangerous element,
were keeping entirely out of trouble.
Every afternoon the heads of the work, Virginia and Amy, continued
their walks, visiting the homes up all the creeks and branches within
a radius of five or six miles, often not returning until nearly
dark. On account of helping with the play-parties in the afternoon
and conducting the sings in the evening, Isabel could not join these
expeditions, much as she longed to. But when she learned that they
proposed going up Noah's Run Saturday afternoon, she declared she would
for once desert duty and go along. The previous Saturday a woman from
the head of that branch had visited the hill, with a tiny, withered
baby in a black calico dress with white polka dots, and the appearance
of the poor little creature had so wrought upon Isabel that she
determined to follow it up.
Saturday morning she hastily made a little dress and cap from one of
her own pretty petticoats, bought the remainder of a very primitive
baby outfit down in the village, and was ready to start with the other
two women after dinner.
They followed Troublesome for a couple of miles, then turned up the
winding branch that bore the name, Noah's Run. Less than a mile from
its mouth was a small store, with nags tied to limbs outside, and men
sitting on the puncheon benches in front. The storekeeper's home, a
neat, weatherboarded house, was the first visited. The wife welcomed
the women as old friends, having visited them on the hill, and her nine
children also having attended the classes pretty regularly. They asked
her, among other things, if typhoid had as yet appeared up her branch;
there were already two or three cases of it in the village, where it
seemed to be expected as confidently as the coming of summer. She said
it had not yet begun on Noah's Run, though everybody was looking for it
any day.
"Everybody on the branch is a-trying to stave hit off by dosting up
on corn-liquor. A dram all around is what me and my man and all our
young-uns takes of a morning and of a night."
To their suggestions that drinking-water be boiled and flies be kept
away from food, she was impervious. "Corn-liquor's the shorest way,"
she said.
Hers was the only house on the branch which had a window, the others
being all windowless log cabins.
At the first of these, the mother, fat, flabby, and dirty, claimed to
have been unable to visit the hill because of poor health. "I got the
breast complaint--some calls hit the galloping consumpt'," she informed
them, proudly.
She sat complacently on the small, rotting porch, fanning herself with
a turkey-wing, while a dozen tow-headed children (boys wearing a single
garment,--a cotton shirt,--girls in ragged cotton dresses) gathered
around to stare with steady, unblinking eyes at the strangers; and
numerous chickens and ducks, and a large litter of young pigs wandered
at will through porch and house.
"I have heared a sight about you quare women, and have longed to lay
eyes on you," the invalid said. "The quarest thing I heared was that
not nary one of you had a man."
They admitted the truth of this rumor, and she gave them another
searching inspection, remarking afterward: "Don't none of you appear to
be pining, though--I allow you have got past hit. I've heared old maids
has a mighty happy time when they git through strugglin'."
What did she do for her "breast complaint"? Well, a nip of corn-liquor
was the "clearingest" thing known for breast and neck. Was it hard to
get? Oh, not now, since the crap was laid by.
Were her children in school? No, indeed, there wasn't any school to
go to on Noah's Run--never had been. She would like to see her boys
get larning--hit holped a man along; but as for gals, she herself had
got on without any, and she allowed women were in general better off
without it. "Not meaning no disrespect to you that have got hit," she
hastened to add. "But you see yourself how hit is--a woman that sets
out to ketch larning is mighty apt not to ketch her a man."
On the porch of the next cabin stood a great loom and two spinning
wheels. The woman of the house was out in the middle of the branch,
washing wool by treading it in a loose basket. She let down her skirts,
dried her hands on her apron, and hurried toward the guests, taking
them through a clean-swept yard into a clean-swept cabin. Everything
was clean--the floor, the chairs, the three fat beds in the room, the
broad hearth, her own gnarled hands and striped homespun dress and
apron, the shirts of her boys, the faded dresses of her girls. She said
she had only seven children at home now, her "main oldest" boy having
died a few years back, and her three oldest girls having married. She
said this oldest boy had been a "pure scholar"; that although he had
never "sot in a schoolhouse" a day in his life, he had in some way got
hold of a speller, and taught himself his letters, and before he was
through, could spell every word in the book, backwards or forwards, and
knew all the reading the same way. If he had lived, it was "ontelling"
what heights he would have climbed to.
"Davy there, my thirteen-year-old, he has the like ambition," she said,
pointing to a boy whose fine, intelligent face flushed under their
gaze. "He'll larn, someway or 'nother, though I don't know how; for,
though there's a big mess of young-uns on this branch, there hain't a
sign of a school, nor likely to be, 'pears like."
One of the younger boys lay across the foot of one of the beds, with
his throat tied up. "He follers having the quinzy," said his mother.
To the question, "What do you do for him?" she replied: "We make him
set and rest frequent at corn-hoeing time, and I give him a little
corn-liquor to kindly holp him up when hit's handy. He's a smart-turned
child, too--all my young-uns is, if they could jest get a chanst."
The next cabin was that of a young pair only three years married, but
in this time they had done their utmost in the way of replenishing the
earth, as three "least ones" attested. The home following was that of
a pair of grandparents, who, having raised one large family, had now
started again with eight orphan grandchildren. They and the mother of
thirteen in the next cabin expressed fervent wishes that their young
should have a chance at learning; and in reply to the question as to
what they were doing to prevent typhoid, responded, as others had done,
that a little grain of corn-liquor was the best preventive known.
So far, the women had counted fifty-two children on the branch. In the
next house there were eleven; and the home of the black calico baby,
at the head of the branch, four miles from its mouth, remained to be
visited.
Arriving there, they saw the mother beside the branch, "battling" the
clothes she had just washed and boiled in a big iron kettle. She would
lift them out of the kettle, lay them on a smooth stump, and then beat,
or "battle," them with a flat stick. Evidently washboards were an
unknown luxury up Noah's Run.
She came forward with joy when she saw the visitors. The wizened baby,
still in the black calico dress and a very dirty cap, lay on a pallet
beneath a big apple tree, with a swarm of flies hovering over it, which
an old, old woman who sat by, smoking a pipe, dispersed every now and
then with a leafy switch. She took the pipe from her mouth to gaze at
the strangers with all her might.
"Is them the quare women, Phronie?" she asked.
"Hit is," replied Phronie.
"That hain't got ary man amongst 'em?"
"The same," replied Phronie; then, to the visitors, "This here is my
maw's old granny that lives with me; she's terrible old--I allow nigh a
hunderd. She don't like to live with none of her grands but me."
"Stop talking and set cheers for 'em, Phronie," commanded the old lady,
sharply.
Whereupon Phronie went into the house and fetched out two chairs,
which, with the one the grandmother sat upon, appeared to be the entire
stock. When the other two visitors were seated, Isabel, picking up
the poor little baby, from whose eyes the experience and suffering of
ages looked out, took her seat on a convenient tree-root, whither the
other children, who had scattered like rabbits on the appearance of the
women, slowly gathered--nine besides the baby.
Here the old lady, with the remark, "I was about to forgit my manners,"
made a sudden dive into her pocket and brought forth a cob pipe similar
to the one she was smoking, and a twist of tobacco, handing them to
Virginia, with the invitation, "Take a smoke."
"Thank you," said Virginia, "but I don't smoke."
"Don't you now? Well, that's quare--I'd larn hit if I was you. My ole
granny used to look so pretty a-smoking, I kotched hit from her, same
as I kotched my trade."
"She follers doctoring women when their time comes," explained Phronie.
"Me and my ole granny together has brung very nigh all the babes that
come to this country for a hunderd year," boasted the old woman. "But,
women, if you don't smoke, take a chaw."
"No, thanks, I believe not."
The old soul looked crestfallen. "I allow you foller chawing manufact',
and this here hain't nothing but home-made," she apologized.
"No, I should prefer this to manufactured if I took it at all,"
Virginia assured her; and to Phronie she said: "Tell us more about your
baby. How old is it?"
"Well, women," said Phronie, in a surprised tone, "I don't rightly
know. Hit were borned quite a spell before corn-crapping time--about
three or four week, weren't hit, granny?"
"Nigher five," granny replied. "I ricollect hit by the dark of the
moon."
"Then it's around four months old?"
"I reckon. But hit hain't growed none sence the day hit come."
"Has it been sick?"
"No, hit don't appear to be--never hollers or cries none; I never seed
a civiler baby. Hit jest lays and pines and pindles."
"Do you nurse it yourself?"
"Give hit suck, you mean? Yes, I allus have a plenty for two young-uns.
And hit'll mostly take the teat all right, but will jest kindly mouth
hit, and not suck hearty like t'other young-uns."
"What do you do for it?"
"Nary thing on earth but give hit good corn-liquor reg'lar. I seed
from the start hit was puny-like, and commenced right off dosting hit
generous, four or five times a day, to holp up its stren'th and wake up
hit's appetite."
"To holp up hit's stren'th and wake up hit's appetite," echoed the
old granny, in her high, cracked voice; "hain't nothing like good
corn-liquor, for young or old."
"And hit was hard to get, too, at corn-crapping time," complained
Phronie; "but," virtuously, "I alius managed to get some."
"If I were you, I would not give it any more," said Amy. "Doctors
nowadays say it is very bad for babies, and stunts their growth and
poisons them badly. Suppose you try for a couple of weeks not giving it
any."
Phronie and granny looked at her in open-mouthed amazement.
"Phronie," said the old lady at last, "these here quare women has got
a sight of book-larning, and if they was to spend their opinions on
books, I'd listen at 'em. But what does a passel of old maids, that
hain't got a baby to their names, know about babies?"
Phronie's objection was on a different ground. "Hit would look too
mean," she said, "for me to drink hit myself and not give none to my
child."
"Try leaving it off yourself, and see if your milk won't agree better
with the baby," suggested Virginia.
But the old lady spoke authoritatively: "Hain't nothing like liquor for
nursing mothers."
The women were silenced. But Isabel opened her bundle and exhibited the
things she had brought for the baby, and asked if she might give it a
warm bath and dress it up.
Phronie immediately set things going. Two of the boys were ordered to
chop wood and make up again the fire under the big kettle, another to
draw water from the well; one of the little girls ran for the family
towel, another for the soft soap, another for the dishpan. And there,
under the apple tree, in the dishpan, Isabel gave the poor little
skeleton baby the first comfortable bath it had ever had in its life,
drying it afterward, not with the soiled, stiff family towel, but
with one of the soft rags she had brought. She bathed it, all but its
head--for on this point granny and Phronie were adamant. To wash a
babe's head, or leave off its cap, under a year, was certain death.
"And I love my child too good to run ary risk," said Phronie. The best
Isabel could do was to put the clean cap on the dirty little head.
The small creature looked up at her gratefully out of its age-old eyes,
and rewarded her by going to sleep in her arms.
Phronie insisted that the women should stay to supper, the afternoon
being about gone. They had brought sandwiches with them in case of a
late return, but accepted her invitation.
Four or five of the children then ran down a chicken, which Phronie
killed and fried. She also warmed up a pot of string beans, and made
biscuits and coffee, and the visitors sat down to a plentiful supper,
occupying the three chairs, while Ben, Phronie's husband, sat on the
churn, and the nine children, not greedy and grabbing as most would
have been, but always quiet and "civil," stood and ate. The women felt
it to be a shame that such well-behaved and apparently bright children
should be six miles away from a schoolhouse, and entirely cut off from
opportunity.
When the guests were ready to start home, Phronie said there was
a "nigher" way for them to return by than the one they had taken
coming--that the walk might be shortened two miles by going along the
ridge-tops. This idea appealed--they knew it could not get very dark,
because the full moon would be rising too soon. So Ben took them up the
mountain in the rear, and a short way along the ridge, leaving them
with the directions: "All you got to do is to keep to the main ridge,
whichever way hit winds, and not turn off on no spur; and hit'll fetch
you right out over them cloth houses of yourn. And there hain't no
varmints to bother you, less'n hit is a few rattlesnakes, which, if you
don't step on 'em, won't do you no harm."
The sun had long since set, but they went along in the clear evening
light, with an exhilarating view of other ridges stretching off on
every side. Along the ridge-top was a narrow, hard-rock formation,
which had resisted the wear and tear of ages, and which made a good,
clear path, and lifted them pretty well above the timber, save where a
great yellow poplar thrust its giant head up, here and there. In the
narrow valleys below, mist was already gathering. Pale stars came out,
and steadily brightened; but the women walked on in the dusk, unafraid.
At last, after they had gone on for an hour, Virginia exclaimed:
"I think I know where we are now. To the right is the valley of
Troublesome, and the land below us must be Fallon's, where Fult and his
friends are getting out timber. And oh, there's the flush in the east
where the moon is rising!"
An instant later, Isabel exclaimed, "Isn't that a light down in the
timber just ahead of us?"
"Yes, it certainly is; probably Fult and the boys are having a 'possum
hunt."
"It seems to be a steady glow, not a moving lantern."
"Well, a 'possum supper, then."
They went on in silence, keeping an eye on the light, which was now
just below them, apparently at the base of the rock, or cliff, they
were on. Then they heard the murmur of voices. A thick curtain of
grapevine here hung in and between the trees, so that in the daytime
vision could never have penetrated to what was beneath. But now,
through the interstices, they could plainly see, about thirty feet
below them, the steady glow of a large fire, which appeared to be
under a sort of furnace of rock; a number of planks and barrels;
several rifles leaning against a tree; and some of Fult's crowd of
young men. Four were engaged in a game of cards, by the light of the
furnace; another was watching the game and feeding the furnace with an
occasional chunk of wood; still another was working at the barrels;
while the last--Charlie Lee--was sampling the tiny stream that trickled
from a pipe in the barrel nearest the furnace and fell into a bucket.
Fult himself was nowhere to be seen.
"These boys are not having any 'possum supper," said Virginia, in a
shocked voice; "they are running a still."
"Oh, they couldn't," exclaimed Amy, "after all Fult's promises to us."
"I've been wild to see a still all my life," said Isabel.
The three stood rooted, gazing with all their eyes. As they looked,
Fult himself, rifle on arm (evidently he had been on guard below),
stepped into the circle of light.
"Mend up the fire, boys," he ordered, "we want to finish this last
run-off. Hit ought to be nigh done now. Charlie, quit tasting them
strong shots--you hain't able to stand hit."
Stooping over, he tasted a "shot" himself, to tell about the stage of
the liquor. At the same moment, Isabel, in her consuming desire to see
the fuller workings of the still, stepped nearer to the cliff-edge, and
with her foot struck a small rock, scarcely more than a pebble, which
bounded off the cliff. It could not have made much noise in falling;
but instantly the furnace light was completely muffled, every voice was
stilled. Then, before any of the women could stir, a bullet whizzed
just over Isabel's head, and a sharp command of "Halt!" rang out. There
was the sound of someone scrambling up through trees and vines, and in
another instant Fult, rifle in hand, stepped out on the cliff before
them, into the moonlight.
He looked, and stood as if turned to stone.
For a long moment nobody spoke. Then Amy found her voice.
"We were spending the afternoon on Noah's Run," she said, "and the
people kept us to supper and sent us back the near way, over the
ridges. We saw the light, and wondered what it could be, and stopped to
see."
"I allow you found out," laughed Fult, unpleasantly.
"We did; but with no intention of spying. We did not dream you would do
such a thing as run a still."
"I never drempt either hit could be you women, or I wouldn't have shot
when I heared the rock fall, and seed a head again' the sky-line."
"I suppose you have forgotten all your promises to us," said Virginia
sadly.
"I hain't broke a single promise to you," replied Fult, indignantly. "I
don't break my word. Nary one of my crowd hain't done a bit of drinking
or shooting yet, or broke the peace in any way."
"But the liquor you are making?"
"Hit ain't for this country. I aim to take hit to the Virginny line and
sell hit there at the mines, where I can get a good price."
"But you did let some of the younger boys get hold of some, didn't you?"
"I give a jug unthoughted to Bob Ainslee for going an arrand, never
thinking of him and t'other young boys getting drunk on hit."
"Oh, why do you do these things which distress us so, and which are
directly against the law?" implored Amy.
"Laws hain't nothing to me if they're onjust," he declared, defiantly.
"I don't think hit's wrong to use the corn I have raised in stilling
liquor, or I wouldn't do hit. But," in a changed and troubled voice, "I
wouldn't have had you women see this still for a thousand dollars."
"Why?"
"Oh, because you look at things different from me. You have got strange
notions. You don't understand our ways up here."
He cast a desperate, searching glance into Isabel's face, as if in the
wild hope of finding some understanding and sympathy there. But her
eyes were dropped; her body was drooping somewhat wearily.
There seemed nothing more to be said on either side. The women turned
slowly away and began their homeward walk.
"Won't--won't you let me--or Charlie--see you safe home?" Fult asked,
in a choked voice.
"No, we feel safer alone, thank you," replied Virginia.
And they walked on, leaving Fult standing like a statue in the
moonlight.
Three hours later, the six women on the hill were awakened from
slumber by the most frightful sounds--rapid shooting, hard galloping,
blood-curdling whoops and yells--down in the village street; and knew
only too well that Fult and his crowd had drunk deeply and ridden in to
"shoot up" the town. Compared with this, the scattering shots of the
previous Saturday and Sunday nights had been but feeble child's-play.
For an hour, death and destruction seemed to be let loose. The women
lay trembling in their tents, hoping against hope that no one would
be killed, feeling that their summer's work had been utterly in vain;
while down in the village mothers crawled under beds with their
children, and lay flattened against the floor, to dodge the flying
bullets.
Every person in the village sought safety but one. That one was Lethie.
Directly over the street where the frenzied boys dashed back and forth,
she knelt by her window, following Fult's figure in wild apprehension
and terror, and sending up incoherent prayers for his safety. It was
nights such as this which had saddened and aged the child beyond her
years.
IX
THE DANGER LINE
The morning after the shooting-up of the village by Fult and his
friends, Billy Lee, when he came up to milk the pieded heifer, brought
the welcome news to the women that nobody had been killed, or even
hurt, but Polly Ainslee's old sow. "The boys allus shoots mostly in
the air, and if folks lays on the floor there hain't no danger," he
said. "I hain't never afeared myself; but Lethie--hit's a sight how hit
skeers her."
The children who came up later to Sunday School corroborated his
statements. "Gee-oh! hit was like old times," they said.
Darcy Kent also spoke of it. "Of course I knowed just what hit was," he
said to them, "and if it had been anybody else, I'd have come down the
creek and settled 'em; but having give my word to you about the truce,
I couldn't, for hit would have brought on the war again at hits worst."
"Yes, you did the only wise thing," they agreed.
He gazed frowningly down the valley. "Fallons is outlaws," he said,
"and allus was, and allus will be, long as one of 'em lives. The only
way is to hunt 'em down like dogs; which my family, being sheriffs for
many a year, and defenders and upholders of the law, has tried hard to
do."
He turned away with Annette, the cooking teacher, his tawny hair and
handsome yellow eyes making an attractive contrast to her silky black
hair and blue eyes.